Daily Archives: May 14, 2020

Documentary Spaceship Earth resurrects stranger-than-fiction story of utopian Biosphere 2 experiment – ABC News

Posted: May 14, 2020 at 5:19 pm

If you thought spending a month indoors binge-watching Netflix and ordering delivery was some sort of gruelling quarantine ordeal, imagine being sealed inside a giant glass terrarium in the Arizona desert with seven other people for two years, all while operating a self-sufficient farming project and managing a working replica of the Earths ecosystem.

That's just what happened back in September 1991, as a group of researchers set out to inhabit a project called Biosphere 2 a self-contained structure of glass Aztec-style pyramids and sci-fi domes that housed an ecological experiment to test the potential sustainability of life on other planets.

It was the mother of all iso projects, a utopian vision that seemed as such visions often do like a combination of wild-eyed scientific endeavour and idealistic, otherworldly cult.

This unusual episode of relatively forgotten pop culture history is captured in the new documentary Spaceship Earth (named for the phrase popularised by futurist Buckminster Fuller, a key inspiration for the project), which uses a wealth of archival footage and new interviews with the "biospherians" to tell a story of technology, art and environmentalism working in inspired synchronicity until their eventual unravelling at the hands of utopia's great foe, humanity itself.

Director Matt Wolf is drawn to eccentrics that tend toward (sometimes unlikely) genius, as evidenced in Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (2008), a tribute to the late experimental pop musician, or Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (2019), which chronicled how one woman's 30-year obsession with videotaping television led to her becoming a key custodian of the late 20th-century news cycle.

In Spaceship Earth, he finds perhaps the perfect subject for his fascination: visionary experimenters whose futurism had roots in the counterculture, theatre and the arts.

Of course, to an outside world fed by the prejudices of mass media, it had all the trappings of a potential cult.

From the film's opening shots of the biospherians in their quasi-futuristic attire looking less like intrepid explorers than the hapless henchman of some 90s-kids-TV villain through the early sequences locating the project's hippy-adjacent genesis in late 60s San Francisco, it's tempting to draw an easy thread connecting spaced-out, self-proclaimed visionaries and apocalyptic cult delusion.

But as Spaceship Earth demonstrates early on, this was a movement that took countercultural ideas and pushed them towards tangible progress, conceiving of projects that were committed to transforming humanity's vision for the future.

The group coalesced around John Allen, a systems ecologist who was less a guru than a kind of visionary frontiersman, closer to a fedora-hatted traveller from a Philip K Dick novel than some be-robed charlatan of the type that the counterculture specialised in cranking out.

Allen's Synergia Ranch and its Theater of All Possibilities attracted like-minded artists and futurists, whose energy soon focused on what they saw as the impending ecological disaster facing a resource-depleted planet.

The movement's peculiar combination of theatre sports and scientific entrepreneurship might scan as a precursor to 21st-century tech company culture, but seen here in grainy, hand-held 16mm footage, it's as though the troupe from Jacques Rivette's Out 1 were training for space colonisation images that Wolf splices together to resemble dispatches from an alternate history of a better future.

Allen and his colleagues speak with admiration for Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1972), another radical, post-60s sci-fi imagining in which Bruce Dern communes with plants inside a biodome cruising into deep space.

But as the group's finance VP Marie Harding is quick to point out, the Theater of All Possibilities wasn't a commune but a corporation.

Bankrolled in part by billionaire Texas oil scion and eco-sympathiser Ed Bass, the group took a necessarily capitalist approach to funding their designs, and as the 80s wore on, with its high tech advances in space travel and boom economy, their plans would come to encompass a vision for developing extraterrestrial colonies in space an eco utopia that seemed to herald the best of what business, technology and ecology could achieve in tandem.

Under the imprimatur of Space Biosphere Ventures, the team set about construction of Biosphere 2 on land in Oracle, Arizona between 1987 and 1991 at a cost of some $150 million and curiosity surrounding the project would turn its launch into a national media event.

It even had in one of the film's more surreal interludes a Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan, introducing it to viewers at home.

Wolf, as he loves to do, conjures this expectant atmosphere with so much gloriously bled-out analogue video footage, overlaid with the familiar yapping of 90s media pundits that would almost feel nostalgic if it werent tainted by the ghosts of early 24-hour news cycle sensationalism.

As he proved in Recorder and his underseen youth chronicle Teenage (2014), Wolf is attentive to the aesthetics of cultural ephemera, pausing to linger on peripheral fashion, the occult-like vector graphics of current affairs broadcasts, or showing a group of black kids in Afro-centric t-shirts wondering why the biodome containing a self-proclaimed "ethnically diverse" group didn't have any provision for "brothers in space".

In these heady moments, Spaceship Earth recalls the anticipatory montages of last year's wondrous Apollo 11 just with more acid wash and hypercolour.

Meanwhile, sequences showing the early stages of life inside the biosphere the farming, the oceanic aquarium, the far-flung technology of video calls connecting occupants to the outside are set to the appropriate strains of Talking Heads' This Must Be the Place, aligning the biospherians with another eccentric American utopian, David Byrne.

But as with all dreams,reality, and human pettiness, inevitably intrudes. (It's telling that no-one interviewed seems to recall the bummer ending to Silent Running.)

"It won't work," says one random bystander interviewed for a TV vox pop. "People are too mean."

While the media do their bit to dismiss the project as "eco entertainment" at best, and a cult at worst, problems with rising carbon dioxide levels, issues with public transparency and inter-project bickering conspire to give the naysayers the fuel they need, and Biosphere 2 gradually turns into a proto reality-TV house with outside observers wondering wholl last the duration inside.

By the time the eight biospherians emerge from their terrarium, it's a different world one in which their vision has been called into question, and a Goldman Sachs banker by the name of Steve Bannon has been put in charge of administering the project, with a view to turning short-term profits.

It's a depressing moment, for sure, but the project has something approaching a hopeful ending, as many of the original members convene on the Synergia Ranch looking for all intents like the cast of Cocoon awaiting their benign alien transport or at least for SpaceX to give them a well-earned ride to the stars.

It may have been a flawed experiment, even a visionary folly, but as Allen says at one point, "it's all theatre".

Spaceship Earth is screening on DocPlay, which offers a 30-day free trial.

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Fauci: Reopening Too Soon Could Lead to "Suffering and Death" – Futurism

Posted: at 5:19 pm

On Tuesday,top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci urged the Senate against prematurely lifting lockdown restrictions.

Pressure is mounting from President Trump to resume normal life and business operations in the U.S. But Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, argues that doing so would be ill-advised, The New York Times reports. Hastily lifting the lockdown, he says, would result in new coronavirus outbreaks and a spike in deaths.

The major message that I wish to convey to the Senate [Health, Labor and Pensions] committee tomorrow is the danger of trying to open the country prematurely, Fauci told the NYT. If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to Open America Again, then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.

Republican officials immediately pushed back against Fauci after it became publicized that he was going to caution against reopening, the NYT reports. Andy Biggs, a House Representative from Arizona, accused Fauci of spreading fear and despair on Twitter.

But the numbers dont support reopening states: unenforceable federal guidelines say that states should have a two-week-long decline in new cases of COVID-19 before lifting lockdown measures. Most states have yet to reach that goal, according to the NYT.

Were not reopening based on science, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the NYT. Were reopening based on politics, ideology and public pressure. And I think its going to end badly.

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Scientists Have a Promising New Idea to Defeat the Coronavirus – Futurism

Posted: at 5:19 pm

In order to find new treatments for COVID-19, scientists are probing how the coronavirus alters human cells when it infects and hijacks them.

Medical virologists at the Frankfurt University hospital have been culturing cells of SARS-CoV-2 since February, learning as much as they could about how itaffects them, according to a Goethe University Frankfurt press release. Now, theyve identified a number of compounds available in existing drugs including the metabolism-inhibiting cancer medication WP1122 that seem to stop the coronavirus from reproducing inside a host.

The teams findings were published Thursday in the journal Nature. With those in hand, pharmaceutical companies are already launching clinical trials in a bid to develop new pharmaceuticals that could block the deadly virus.

Some viruses force cells to dedicate all their resources to churning out copies of the virus, but the virologists found that SARS-CoV-2 takes a less extreme approach. Instead of taking over all protein production within the cell, it increases the amount of proteins the cell synthesizes and helps itself to the surplus.

As a result, the team found that they could stop viral reproduction by taking away the building blocks of proteins, and found a number of compounds that did the trick.

The successful use of substances that are components of already approved drugs to combat SARS-CoV-2 is a great opportunity in the fight against the virus, lead author and Frankfurt virologist Jindrich Cinatl said in the release. These substances are already well characterized, and we know how they are tolerated by patients. This is why there is currently a global search for these types of substances. In the race against time, our work can now make an important contribution as to which directions promise the fastest success.

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Augmented reality giant Magic Leap is closing its Seattle office amid layoffs – GeekWire

Posted: at 5:19 pm

(Magic Leap Photo)

Update, 4:42 p.m. PT: A Magic Leap representative confirmed that the office has closed.

Original story: Magic Leap will close its Seattle satellite office, according to a new state filing, as the well-funded augmented reality startup sheds workers and pivots its focus to business customers.

A WARN notice filed with the Washington state Employment Security Department says that Magic Leap will close its Seattle outpost. The move will impact 39 workers beginning June 21, according to the notice.

In a April 22 blog post, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz said the company cut staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Bloomberg reported that about 1,000 employees were let go, or about half of the workforce.

The secretive company, headquartered in Plantation, Fla., landed in Seattle four years ago. Its one of more than 125 out-of-town companies that have established engineering and research-and-development facilities in the Seattle region in recent years.

Magic Leaps Seattle office was led by Neal Stephenson, the famed science fiction author who became the companys chief futurist six years ago, along with Brian Schowengerdt, a longtime University of Washington professor who is its chief science and experience officer and co-founder.

The outpost hosted a group called SCEU, short for Self-Contained Existence Unit, a content-focused R&D squad led by Stephenson. It was also home to a developer relations team led by gaming veteran Tadhg Kelly, who left Magic Leap this month, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Weve contacted Magic Leap, Stephenson, and Schowengerdt for details about the Seattle office and will update this story when we hear back.

Magic Leap has generated immense interest over the years, and even more cash, raising more than $2.6 billion in its lifetime from heavy hitters including Google, Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz, Paul Allens Vulcan Capital and others.

Virtual and augmented reality has found some traction with businesses but not as much with consumers. Even with the ongoing pandemic and more people staying at home, VR remains a niche product, Axios reported this week.

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How will you re-introduce your business to customers? – Trinidad Guardian

Posted: at 5:19 pm

Whenever a wild card becomes possible, the future planning playbook has to be rewritten. This quote by Tamar Kasriel, a retail futurist, speaks volumes. She was commenting that futurists had regarded the pandemic as a wild card. That is, an occurrence that would have big, worldwide impact, but a highly improbable event. Well, the event is here and were muddling our way through its big impact.

My focal point in this statement is about the rewriting of the playbook and in particular, the customer experience playbook. Customers have been cooing about their newly found freedom to transact business when and where they choose, using digital tools. As well, theyve been signalling their interest in seeing the coming attractions that businesses have in store for them, post lockdown.

Ive been curious about customers reactions to conducting business online. The majority of persons whove responded to my questioning have said that they have no intention of going back to the old way of doing business. One service provider declared to me recently that he would no longer be collecting a cheque for his services and that we should pay via direct deposit to his account. Multiply his migration by the thousands like him and we begin to see the scale of the shift to online technology. The adoption of digital tools has opened John Publics appetite for convenience and ease of doing business. This sentiment accords nicely with the expanded tools that will have to be rolled out as part of the new digital way of doing business.

Businesses, on the other hand, are trying to catch their breath and catch a break from the body blows inflicted by the disruption. Their big worry is the battle to cope with having to triage reputation excellence, public health management and economic survivability. As we look into the future and follow the arc of the disruption, theres even more disquieting news for businesses. Were seeing protracted economic upheaval looming in the distance. Whew and were only in the fifth month of the year. No pressure.

The pandemic has brought individuals, customers and businesses to their inflection points. Individuals are having deep, existential discussions with themselves about what matters. Customers are reflecting on whether they will continue to patronise their favourite retailer, given the retailers socially responsible and public safety track record during the pandemic. Businesses meanwhile, faced with some or all of this contextual intelligence, have to decide on the best landing points that will keep their customers happy, whilst navigating an largely unfamiliar network of new technology and operating systems.

Perceptive businesses will connect the huge display of humanity during this crisis, to customers need for more sensitive displays of concern from their favourite grocer or restaurant. Customers will be inclined to do business with businesses that have displayed a social conscience and not just revenue chasing behaviour.

But lets focus on the social conscience forces that are reshaping customer personas amidst this crisis. The next normal may demand that businesses re-introduce themselves with a renewed commitment to values that reflect kindness, care and concern for their customers, employees and social causes. As this customer friendly touch begins to gain traction, businesses that amplify simplicity and empathy actions will benefit.

Simplicity means that businesses will begin to pinpoint and expunge the majority of complexities associated with transactions. Will electronic signatures, chatbots, interactive teller machines, a single bank card that enables all transactions, contactless payments and self approved loans become commonplace? Will in-person visits to business places become a thing of the past? The answer is yes, in time. Bear in mind that while Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the Caribbean region are typically two to three years behind the rest of the world in digital adoption and adaptation, our acceleration into the digital age will continue. Slowly maybe, but surely.

An over-abundance of empathy has been on display at a national level. Customers in their citizen incarnations, have been extending goodwill and humanitarian assistance to those less fortunate and now are highly sensitive to the level of care that they expect, in turn, from businesses. What customers have been giving, they will now expect to receive. Businesses that are powered by a customer first philosophy, will not miss this marker. They would have already communicated to their people that nothing is too much trouble in service delivery.

So, let me address the elephant in the room. Are any of these service delivery notions new? Absolutely not! Are the customer expectations markers new? Again, absolutely not! Whats new is the context and the climate in which we now find ourselves. The ravages of the pandemic have caused people to recalibrate first, whats important and what matters to them. Next, to begin judging their service providers with a more deliberate yardstick that is connected to higher order values systems and how those values translate into the treatment of the customer.

Business leaders, as you continue to roadmap your navigation out of this lockdown, how will you translate lessons learnt into determining how you will re-introduce your business to your customers? Now is the time to decide how your business will stand out in a sea of sameness. Differentiation is power. Youre armed with intelligence, hindsight and insight. How will you use these three data sets to scale up your service excellence foresight?

We must not be simply good at making noise as we have in the past about service excellence. We now need to be good at making the moves to create a differentiated customer reality. By choice.

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There’s a Resurgence of Coronavirus Cases in China – Futurism

Posted: at 5:19 pm

A resurgence of coronavirus cases is starting to hit China, as well as other countries including South Korea and Germany, just as governments are starting to loosen restrictions. Even Wuhan, the Chinese city and epicenter of the now global pandemic, experienced a new cluster of five cases.

The trend has governments worried. Is this the much-feared second wave, or a sign of smaller and controllable valleys and peaks as testing becomes available to a larger number of people?

While its still too early to predict the scale of this second wave if it turns out to be one at all,as opposed to statistical noise it demonstrates that countries are shifting towards a whack-a-mole approach, putting out a number of smaller fires rather than instituting blanket rules to contain a nationwide spread.

Chinese authorities reported 17 new cases over the weekend, The Guardian reports, which is the second day of double-digit new cases and the highest in almost two weeks. Its a far cry from the four digit daily new cases the country experienced back in February but still an ominous trend for the deadly, highly-contagious virus.

Chinas new cases were largely isolated to regions in the northeast. Shulan, a city in Jilin province on the border to North Korea and Russia, had to be put back under partial lockdown over the weekend after officials reported 13 new cases. Other regions also had to be put under renewed lockdown over smaller outbreaks.

A number of new cases related to nightclubs in Seoul, South Korea also has authorities worried about a potential second wave. As a result, bars and clubs are again temporarily closed in the capital. The South Korean government even pushed back the reopening of schools.

But officials cautioned that the new cases do not necessarily mean a second wave is coming.

The first wave has not ended and had a break to start another pandemic, Jung Eun Kyeong, director-general of South Koreas Center for Disease Control told NBC News during a briefing on Monday.

Its not over until its over, noted South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday, noting that South Koreans must never lower [their] guard regarding epidemic prevention.

Just as Germany decided to leave reopening measures to its individual 16 states, with citizens returning to restaurants and bars in some regions, authorities noted that the reproduction rate how many people an infected person ends up infecting in turn appeared to rise back to 1.1 in the European nation, ringing alarm bells.

Germanys center for disease control, however, claimed there was still uncertainty surrounding the latest estimates but noted that more data was critical. Federal rules in Germany state that any county with more than 50 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants will be locked down, CNN reports.

The fears come just as countries are starting the long process of a return to normalcy while maintaining health and safety measures including social distancing and encouraging the wearing of face coverings.

Disneyland in Shanghai reopened to the public on Monday, albeit with enhanced health and safety measures. The first restaurants reopened in Germany over the weekend. Earlier this month, South Korea announced that baseball and soccer matches are expected to start up again, albeit without stadium audiences.

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Have a Good Trip Demystifies Psychedelics – The New Republic

Posted: at 5:18 pm

Irony, of course, is the main line to Have A Good Trips target audience: nostalgic Gen Xers and elder millennials whose interest in high-power hallucinogens has likely been piqued by the so-called psychedelic renaissance. There is, I suspect, a certain level of knowing irony in other quarters of the psychedelic revival, be it in the popularity of neo-psychedelic rock bands like Tame Impala or King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (whose names alone suggest forked tongues firmly in cheek) or the elevation of pilled Grateful Dead tie-dye tour shirts to pricy, haute couture attire. Modern psychedelic explorers engage with the culture but avoid the effusions of earnestness that made the fizzled cultural revolutions of the boomer generation feel so embarrassing. The third eye is awakened and already rolling.

But can you really remove sincerity from the psychedelic experience, which has long been vaunted for its ability to facilitate beautiful insights about the power of capital-l Love; insights that may scan like mush when the drugs effects have faded but feel, in that exalted moment, absolutely real? And more to the point, should you want to? After all, one of the characteristics of the psychedelic trip is its capacity to obliterate what Pollan calls the pitiless glare of irony. Its that feeling of openness or a universal oneness that reoccurs in psychedelic literature, cinema, and even the woolly anecdotes of friends. Irony has become a de facto cultural defense mechanism and is rendered vulnerable by drugs renowned for opening (or totally shattering) our psychic defenses.

Irony is perhaps useful in tempering a bit of the cultural bitterness associated with the movements of psychedelias last major saturation period: the 1960s. Psychedelic drugs fueled the artistic and political upheavals of America in the Age of Aquarius, which collapsed under the bummer-trip heaviness of Altamont, the Manson murders, and the national trauma of the Vietnam War. As author Tom ONeill puts it in Chaos, his recent history that rethinks the era, The decades subversive spirit had come on with too much fervor. Some reckoning was bound to come, or so it seemed in retrospect; the latent violence couldnt contain itself forever. This cultural comedown is often framed, in distinctly druggy terms, as a form of punishment for the ecstasies that preceded itlike a long, blue Monday of the American spirit.

The psychedelic revivals ironic edge cuts some of this, allowing the curious-minded to savor the hallucinatory fruits of the era without getting swept up in its politics, which, as we all know, were tainted and stupid and hopelessly nave. (New reporting about the period, including ONeills book, strongly suggests that this sense of hopelessness and navet was a deliberate strategy by the powers-that-be to neutralize the energized leftist movements of the 1960s, but thats another discussion altogether.) A veil of wizened, weary cynicism permits engagement in psychedelia without having to feel all that engaged with its history or its deeper, metaphysical implications.

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Investing in Psychedelics – Energy and Capital

Posted: at 5:18 pm

I took two grams of mushrooms before heading out into the forest.

It was around 5:30 a.m. and the cool, morning rains were just starting to fade and transition into the warm blanket of an orange peel sunrise.

The bird songs were oddly melodic, my water jug was full, and it didnt take long for me to start melting into my surroundings.

The fruit of the staghorn sumac was glowing, and I could taste the sun-brewed staghorn tea that Id make this summer. I could even smell the raw wildflower honey and sprigs of mint that I always use to liven up the extract.

If youve never had it before, its very similar to lemonade. But up here in North Country, we dont grow lemons. And staghorn sumac is so hearty, it mocks the harsh winters and wet springs.

Im pretty sure that if an atom bomb landed squarely in the middle of Lake Champlain, the only thing remaining would be roaches and Staghorns.

I actually thought about this quite a bit on my journey.

Propped up against the withered white bark of an old yellow birch tree and gazing at all the beauty God created, I got lost in those Staghorn fruits, hypnotized by the intricacies of their soft, fuzzy clusters and geometric shapes.

And I started thinking about how this particular tree, which is littered all over the Adirondacks, is also common in the Middle East.

Culturally, these worlds couldnt be more different. Yet, here we are two complete universes separated by dirt, water, and politics but feasting upon the same fruit without any thought of physical distance or climatic diversity.

Disconnected by language, culture, and war but completely connected by nature.

Not to get all treehugger on you, but that experience really made me want to share a cup of sumac tea, with some like-minded Persians at a corner cafe in Tehran.

Yes, as you can imagine, it was a pleasant journey.

But these days, magic mushrooms are no longer being sought out solely by folks like me who simply enjoy a pleasant, psychedelic experience. Theyre being used to treat mental illness and with great success.

Last year, you may have seen the segment that 60 Minutes produced, which focused on psychedelic medicines.

During that segment, the world learned about a new treatment for smoking addiction that boasted an 86% success rate.

For the sake of comparison, the most successful pharmaceutical currently on the market enjoys a 35% success rate. If success," is what you want to call it.

The fact is, this country has a very serious mental illness and drug addiction crisis. And its going to get worse.

As reported by the Washington Post, the coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis:

Nearly half of Americans report the coronavirus crisis is harming their mental health, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. A federal emergency hotline for people in emotional distress registered a more than 1,000 percent increase in April compared with the same time last year. Last month, roughly 20,000 people texted that hotline, run by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Online therapy company Talkspace reported, a 65% jump in clients since mid-February. Text messages and transcribed therapy sessions collected anonymously by the company show coronavirus-related anxiety dominating patients concerns.

If we dont do something about it now, people are going to be suffering from these mental-health impacts for years to come, said Paul Gionfriddo, president of the advocacy group Mental Health America. That could further harm the economy as stress and anxiety debilitate some workers and further strain the medical system as people go to emergency rooms with panic attacks, overdoses and depression, he said.

Just as the country took drastic steps to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by infections, experts say, it needs to brace for the coming wave of behavioral health needs.

Not to sound crass, but the reality is that theres never been a better time to bring to market new and potentially better treatments for mental illness. Certainly the FDA thinks so, as it has fast-tracked a number of new psychedelic medicines for clinical trials. And more are coming.

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This is great news for those who do suffer from mental illness and addiction.

And its also great news for investors.

You see, in addition to the hundreds of studies that suggest there are some very real benefits to treating mental illness and addiction with psychedelics

And in addition to new psychedelics decriminalization bills being introduced, debated, and yes, passed

And in addition to an overall loosening of stigmas regarding illegal drugs around the world

Perhaps the most well-known is entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who happens to boast a net worth of $2.3 billion.

Thiel recently ponied up big time to get a piece of ATAI Life Sciences, which is a biotech company developing psychedelic medicines for a variety of mental health issues.

Other stinking-rich investors who have recently put up their own millions in the psychedelics space include former CEO of Canopy Growth Corporation Bruce Linton (who amassed more than $200 million during his time with the company) and Shark Tank celebrity investor Kevin OLeary, who boasts a net worth of about $400 million.

There are more, but those are probably the most well-known and have no problem with people knowing about their investments in the psychedelics space.

Others arent so public, and I know some of them.

From elite family offices to high rollers in Silicon Valley, a lot of cash is starting to pour into this space. And when the rich folks start showing up to these parties, you know something big is about to go down.

Ill have more on this burgeoning opportunity in the coming weeks.

To a new way of life and a new generation of wealth...

Jeff Siegel

@JeffSiegel on Twitter

Jeff is the founder and managing editor of Green Chip Stocks, a private investment community that capitalizes on opportunities in alternative energy, organic food markets, legal cannabis, and socially responsible investing. He has been a featured guest on Fox, CNBC, and Bloomberg Asia, and is the author of the best-selling book, Investing in Renewable Energy: Making Money on Green Chip Stocks. For more on Jeff, go to his editor's page.

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Psilocybin May be the Key to Treating a Range of Health Issues, Including Obesity – Baystreet.ca

Posted: at 5:18 pm

Psilocybin mushrooms may change the way we look at medicine and significantly help improve the health of millions of people around the world. That may be especially true when it comes to treating obesity, which has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a global epidemic, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result.

At the moment, a number of studies show psychedelic treatments, such as with psilocybin mushrooms can assist with issues such as substance dependency, PTSD, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and pain. Even Johns Hopkins Medicines Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research is focusing on psychedelics, including psilocybin for the treatment of eating disorders, depression, and PTSD. As the growth story unfolds, some of the companies to keep an eye on include The Yield Growth Corp.(CSE:BOSS)(OTC:BOSQF), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Champignon Brands Inc. (OTC:SHRMF)(CSE:SHRM), Mind Medicine Inc. (OTC:MMEDF), and Revive Therapeutics Ltd. (CSE:RVV)(OTC:RVVTF).

The Yield Growth Corp.(CSE:BOSS)(OTCQB:BOSQF)BREAKING NEWS:The Yield Growth Corp. announced its majority owned subsidiary NeonMind has completed the design of a preclinical study to confirm that psilocybin (found in psychedelic mushrooms) is an effective treatment for weight loss and food craving. NeonMind engaged Translational Life Sciences Inc., a contract research organization, to design the study. The TLS team is composed of physicians and scientists who are recognized thought leaders in the fields of Neurology, Pharmacology, Diabetes, Addiction and Biochemistry and have significant experience in the clinical application of cannabinoid compounds.

The goal of the study is to use preclinical models to confirm that psilocybin is an effective treatment for weight loss and food craving. NeonMind will use models that have been widely adopted by the pharmaceutical industry to identify compounds with therapeutic efficacy. It plans to use results from this study as part of the requirements for a Health Canada clinical trial application to demonstrate potential efficacy and safety for novel compounds.

Obesity has been formally recognized by the World Health Organization as a global epidemic, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese. According to the WHO, in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese. Overweight and obesity is defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health.

According to the WHO, in its Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, a unique opportunity exists to formulate and implement an effective strategy for substantially reducing deaths and disease worldwide by improving diet and promoting physical activity. The global projected market for weight loss and weight management is estimated at US$245 billion, according to MarketsandMarkets.

NeonMind plans to complete the study in Canada in accordance with all Health Canada rules and regulations. Required permits and exemptions have not been yet applied for, but shall be obtained prior to the study taking place.

Other related developments from around the markets include:

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) will participate in Bernstein's 36thAnnual Strategic Decisions Virtual Conference on Wednesday, May 27th. Alex Gorsky, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer will represent the Company in a session scheduled at 10:00 a.m. (Eastern Time).

Champignon Brands Inc. (OTC:SHRMF)(CSE:SHRM) announced its placement in an editorial published byNetworkNewsWire. The expansion of the functional food and drinks sector has created a new opportunity. While cannabis and CBD have taken these consumables beyond the traditional active ingredients of alcohol and caffeine, this diversification of the market has opened up consumers to new possibilities. Among those possibilities is the use of natural ingredients found in mushrooms.

Mind Medicine Inc. (OTC:MMEDF) in collaboration with University Hospital Basels Liechti Laboratory, has discovered and filed a patent application in the United States (preserving all worldwide rights) for a neutralizer technology intended to shorten and stop the effects of an LSD trip during a therapy session. This discovery, when further developed, may act as the off-switch to an LSD trip. MindMed is the leading psychedelic pharmaceutical company and the Liechti Laboratory is the leading research center focused on the pharmacology of psychedelic substances. This is the latest discovery based on surprising experimental results from work and collaboration conducted at the lab. The invention may help reduce the acute effects of a psychedelic drug and help shorten the hallucinogenic effects when required by a patient or medical professional. One of the many fears and stigmas associated with psychedelics are rare occurrences of bad trips. MindMed is seeking to equip therapists and other medical professionals with the resources and technology to better control the effects of dosing LSD in a clinical setting to improve the patient experience and patient outcomes. This advancement paves the way for greater therapeutic applications of LSD and shorter-acting psychedelic therapy treatments. MindMed believes this technology, when further developed, may one day be marketed as an added feature to shorten a therapy session and stop a session if the patient is not comfortable.

Revive Therapeutics Ltd. (CSE:RVV)(OTC:RVVTF) will investigate novel oral dosage forms of psilocybin, such as oral dissolvable thin films or tablets, based on the Companys wholly-owned patent-pending psilocybin formulations and its exclusive licensed drug delivery technology from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. We are expanding our psilocybin-based pharmaceutical portfolio with unique oral dosage and drug delivery forms that will target and have the potential to treat diseases and disorders currently not investigated with psychedelic compounds, said Michael Frank, Revives Chief Executive Officer. We are combining our robust intellectual property portfolio in both psychedelic formulations and our drug delivery technology which is unique within the industry, and leveraging our research partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to establish a specialty portfolio of psilocybin-based pharmaceuticals that we can advance to clinical trials and partnerships with other life sciences companies. Through initial evaluations with the Companys research team, it has been found there are several unique parallels between the Companys intellectual property portfolio of psilocybin-based formulations and delivery mechanism and the drug delivery technology, which is comprised of tannin-chitosan composites that have been studied with cannabidiol in the past. Revive intends to research both delivery mechanisms in parallel as each provides its own unique qualities such as the potential of rapid onset of action and time-release compositions. The future of psilocybin as a medication will come in many forms. The Company believes that the most optimal delivery method to pursue and unlock the potential of psilocybin to treat a broad spectrum of diseases and disorders will be in the form of both an oral dissolvable tablet and an oral thin film strip, commonly recognized as a Breath Strip. The Company is preparing its formulation development plans intending to pursue clinical studies for indications currently not being evaluated with psilocybin. We believe the combination of psilocybin and our tannin-chitosan delivery platform gives us a unique advantage.

Legal Disclaimer/ Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contains forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Winning Media which has a partnership with http://www.MarijuanaStox.com is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Winning Media, which has a partnership with http://www.MarijuanaStox.com, is only compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation. Pursuant to an agreement between Winning Media (partners of http://www.MarijuanaStox.com) and The Yield Growth Corp., Winning Media has been paid three thousand five hundred dollars for advertising and marketing services for The Yield Growth Corp. We own ZERO shares of The Yield Growth Corp. Please click here forfull disclaimer.

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Psilocybin May be the Key to Treating a Range of Health Issues, Including Obesity - Baystreet.ca

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Movie review: Netflix’s ‘Have a Good Trip’ is only a mild high – Eagle-Tribune

Posted: at 5:18 pm

We can't take trips these days for obvious reasons. But Netflix is offering a trip into the mind with a gentle new documentary about the world of hallucinogens.

Donick Carys Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics uses celebrities recounting their trips on LSD or mushroom to counteract built-up fears about psychotropic drugs even offering tips about how to use them better all against the backdrop of trippy '60s-style cartoons with rainbows and unwinding tongues.

This is a clearly pro-psychedelic film, not too preachy and not too pointed, with lazy science. There are really only two authoritative voices in the film, and they both endorse investigation into hallucinogens the alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra (Were on a trip right now. Life is a trip, he says) and UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Charles Grob. There are no dissenting voices.

So if you prefer your drug advice from celebrities, this is the film for you. David Cross, Nick Kroll, Ben Stiller, Natasha Lyonne, A$AP Rocky and Sarah Silverman are among those talking about their trips, both bad and good. Silverman found herself in the passenger seat of a car driven by a man so high hed forgotten how to drive.

That leads to one of the film's several drug tips, made to look like those The More You Know PSA: Dont drive while tripping. Control your setting. Dont ever look in the mirror. (You can see through your skin, Silverman warns.)

We learn that Lewis Black once got so high he forgot his own name and flipped through a dictionary for what seems like hours looking for clues. Rosie Perez tripped so bad once in the late 1980s that she was eventually doing the backstroke on a dance club floor.

These stories are often delightful and enhanced by great cartoons or re-creations acted by many of those interviewed but are we sure we need celebrity insights here? Rob Corddry has played a satirical journalist on The Daily Show, but were not sure hes the guy who should be dispensing advice about how the national scientific community handles testing on acid ("We blew it," he says, minus an expletive).

Two of the best anecdotes are by terrific storytellers who are no longer with us TV host and chef Anthony Bourdain and actress Carrie Fisher, both for whom the film is dedicated. (Which makes you wonder how long this film has been on the shelf).

Bourdain talks about his attempt to mimic Hunter S. Thompson by going on a road trip with a buddy to the Catskills with a pretty dizzying array of controlled substances quaaludes, weed, coke, beer, gin, hash and LSD. They picked up two hitchhiking exotic dancers, and thats when things took a turn.

Fisher confesses she took a lot of LSD over her life, including once in a park where she witnessed a talking acorn who insisted on showing her his choreography. I never saw anything that wasnt there. I just saw things that were there misbehave, she notes, brilliantly.

Some celebrities have clearly thought deeply about their trips, like Sting, who while high on peyote in the English countryside, helped a cow give birth: For me, the entire universe cracked open. And Reggie Watts uses this poetic metaphor for hallucinogens: Its like a stepladder to look over a brick wall thats a little bit too tall for you.

There are intriguing moments when the thread to a better movie is revealed, as when Perez confides that her LSD trip prompted her to seek out therapy to help ease her Roman Catholic guilt. Sting also reveals that some of his trips have helped him write songs. Really? Which ones? More concrete examples of how mushrooms or dropping acid aided life are sorely needed.

And another misfire: Writer and director Cary has decided to lighten the mood by periodically mocking the paranoid anti-drug public service announcements of the 80s with his own extended send-up that gets tiresome.

Adam Scott in a black leather jacket shows up in each, being ultra-serious about the evil of drugs. 'Knock, knock, knock.' Who is it?''Its a deranged drifter who wants to torture you for the next 12 hours, he says in one ad-within-the-film. Thats exactly what youre doing when you open your brain to hallucinogenics.

And the filmmaker has employed another marvelous off-kilter figure in Nick Offerman, pretending to be a scientist. Dont get me wrong, drugs can be dangerous, he tells us. But they can also be hilarious." But Offerman is neither in this film and so he is wasted. Like this film wasted but not in a good way.

Have a Good Trip, a Netflix release out today, is rated TV-MA for drug substances and language.

1 1/2 stars out of 4

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Movie review: Netflix's 'Have a Good Trip' is only a mild high - Eagle-Tribune

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