I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew during the height of the 3D Robotics days, and spending time pair-programming with him on a GPS Driver for ArduPilot. It was incredible to see his confidence in moving around the codebase, making edits. It left an impression on me, it was watching someone who really knew what he was doing. I was inspired. He was also very jovial and fun.
I also remember how concerned he was about the safety of flying vehicles. We were all on the rooftop of a building in Berkeley showing off hackathon projects on drones. He was pointedly staying under the one roof overhang, telling people that this is definitely unsafe. Minutes later someone crashed a drone at full speed into a utility pole, sending shrapnel
and lithium battery chunks everywhere. How it didn't catch fire I'll never know. I think 3DR was a little cowboy for his taste at times, he.
Tridge, if you read this, it was a real pleasure working with you!
You're painting an unfairly one-sided picture here, as so many pro-psychedelic people do. These are highly potent chemicals that also have negative physical and psychological effects. It's not as simple as "these substances cure a condition and the fear of psychedelics keep them repressed". You are saying the equivalent of the college stoner friend saying "you can't get addicted!" about weed. Even this article points to fatal heartbeat irregularities as a dangerous side effect that has limited ibogaine's study.
Look at the analogs act, and the banning of salvia in many US states, and tell me that such things as negative externalities are actually weighted in the decision to ban things. Look at 2CB. It was banned for having chemical proximity to DOB, which is banned for having chemical proximity to DOM. 2CB was banned for the entire justification of "posing a risk to the public health." Where? How? I've never found data published to justify this scheduling, other than chemical proximity. Why was DOM banned? Posing a risk to the public health. Again, I can find no data.
Salvia is even more clowning. Republican legislators heard that it's a more potent psychedelic than LSD and rushed to ban it without even knowing what "potency" means for such a comparison. This has led to such beautiful pieces of law as Florida (I believe) banning salvia divinorum and all chemical derivatives thereof. Salvia divinorum is a plant. There are no chemical derivatives. They should have specified its principle component, salvinorin A, and its derivatives. These banning were made entirely out of moral panic, with not even a modicum of pharmacological or chemical understanding.
Ibogaine's safety profile is pretty good, there is a reason it is legal in other countries. The cardiac risk factors can be mitigated with appropriate screening, and of course, it should not be consumed with other substances with unsafe drug interactions. To the extent that Ibogaine fatalities have occurred, they are largely attributable to these two factors. In this respect, it is not especially different from plenty of other OTC and prescription drugs.
This is not to say that Ibogaine has zero risk for either physical or psychological harm---this cannot be said about very many perscription drugs either. However, given its efficacy for treating opiod use disorders alone, along with its safety profile, there is no logical reason that it should be out of reach for mental health professionals, let alone a schedule 1 substance.
This would be a great rebuttal if I said “this is why ibogaine isn’t approved and used broadly!” but I didn’t. I said this is why we don’t really understand Ibogaine.
The action proposed in the article is: more trials
Great comment!
Indeed there is a recent Nature paper that's causing a lot of discussion that is investigating that missing link between the physics of matter and the emergence of the natural selection and evolution processes that give rise to life. this is a really fascinating area! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
That link (going from basic chemical to bootstrapped evolution) is an entire field of research. Not one paper now and then. Labs, money, researchers building on each other's work... Just want to point out.
Thank you for this, this is awesome. You shared a long, challenging, and deeply personal experience with candor and empathy. Well done!
I grew up in an agricultural area and everyone had respiratory issues from the massive amounts of pesticide and pollen in the area. I was also allergic to house dust mites. It was bad! I remember being unable to breathe through my nose at all for years, having surgery, and completely changing my experience of life. I've recently noticed that i'm having quite a bit of trouble breathing at night, and those old demons are coming back. Your writeup is inspiring me to do a closer investigation as I have been experiencing very similar issues - brainfog, memory loss, all the above.
Your comments is also on point around the shortcomings of OneMedical-style rotating cast of practitioners rather than the longer term relationship with a caregiver.
I know story first hand about a boy with a strong astma on breathing machine daily from dusty capital.
When mom moved him to my clean region with fresh air he stopped needing it after two weeks.
But even living here can cause health issues because of winter. More exactly burning coal, not being able to wind room before sleep with clean air, sticking in heated house in dry air and washing in hard (?) water with too much calcium and other minerals.
I had allergy to pollen every year counted with a watch. The same week, hospital, nearly choked up to death. I was 7-8yo.
It disappeared itself. but I think I changed my diet as a teenager.
Later discovered histamine sensitivity, the hard way.
Everything eventually comes to our diet not being what it was before inventing farming in natural conditions, our actual diet messing up our natural biom, including already erased majority of bacteria we originally had as mammals and mistakes of our parents impacting our wiring before getting born, especially in pregnancy period (including being born the wrong hole).
Later it's just our body adapting to what it has and coping as it can. The older the more bad accumulates.
Adding new experimental ideas on top of that..
Humanity is not smart, but it surely is persistent at blindly trying things.
It's just one person finds it earlier other later and sometimes have a different kind of luck.
Ah, tailsitters. Everyone loves the theory, then the practical realities of the takeoff position exposing the entire wing surface to the prevailing wind quickly kills real-world applications. I remember back during the 3D Robotics heyday watching Chris Anderson repeatedly run down to set his tailsitter upright, take a few steps back, only to watch it fall over again.
Martin UAV is looking like the one to beat in medium range right now, and it's a pretty slick tailsitter design. If I was a betting man, I'd say that it's going to eat ScanEagle's lunch sometime in the next few years, or get bought. Which, ugh, the latter seems more likely, sad to say.
I'm not with Martin, but scuttlebutt is that the flight controls take into account takeoff and landing winds, then use that to adjust the flight attitude on approach and takeoff, since the wind can add to the effective airspeed for rotation.
Once it tags the ground the flight procedures have it nail itself to the pad double quick. That's about the only dodgy part, but they've done it from the back of a speeding truck and it looked fine. Hell of a lot finer than "drive the plane into a rubber band hanging from a stick".
It transitions into forward wing flight after take off. It does achieve a greater flight distance/flight time per battery compared to the same size of thing as a quadcopter, but NOT as great of endurance as something like a 2 meter wingspan VTOL with four lift motors + single thrust motor, such as:
I (as someone without a need for any drone and therefore without having looked at enough prices of drones to have any gut instinct here) was curious how much that first one you linked - the Marlyn UAV - might cost, since the company only says to contact them for pricing.
This page [1] suggests $17k, is that likely on the money (pun intended, sorry) or just a random scam site?
don't think that's a scam site, though it probably has a healthy profit margin. that price is within the range of normal for a fully built surveying drone for use by people who aren't interested in getting into the technical details of pixhawk/ardupilot/arducopter stuff and building their own. They're sold to surveying companies, mining companies etc.
go look at pricing for the DJI Matrice 30 (M30) for some comparisons...
Can't you take off from a closed box? For landing the flight controller should be able to compensate for the wind and come down in a somewhat vertical position.
For vertical takeoff and landing the wing surface is mostly irrelevant, right? Seems like if you gave the rotors a “landing configuration” where they rotated 90 degrees you could lay the wing flat on the ground.
This is the distinction between tilt wing aircraft and tilt rotors. The former were explored in the 60s and found impractical. The latter took longer to develop but are now practical.
The original comment is spot on: hovering vertically with a big wing also vertical just doesn't work well in the real world. That said, the situation might be different for very small drones, for similar reasons to why you don't build full size quadcopters.
The wings look like they have smaller control surfaces the full wings are not. But to make cheap drones that are dropped or launches from a cheap taco holder its probably fine.
The Harrier, Osprey and the carrier variant of F-35 are real world aircraft that point the thrust vector at the ground for takeoff and landing, then rotate it to the back for forward flight.
Lots of denial and sarcasm in the comments here. A person close to me had many of the experiences described in this, including the psychotic episodes that I had to help them through. Try to imagine how frightening and difficult it is to see someone you care about experience that, from a substance that's portrayed as safe and harmless and fun. they are still working to get back to a healthy place after years of cannibis abuse.
And cannabis was the only substance they were using? Were they using cannabis as a substitute for some other medicine, that they're now currently on?
It hardly seems fair to say "I know a guy..." to justify comparing a drug that is widely considered safe to one where people have been convicted of widespread fraud for claiming safety when they knew that it was not.
I am sorry for your friend, but based on the very limited data you have given it, it sounds like there could easily be other circumstances that make even that one data point uninformative.
The burden of safety falls on those who want to sell a product, not the other way around. From the article, all the beneficial effects and safety studies for the drug have been done on a much lower THC dosage than you see today.
Everything that we know as dangerous today was thought of as benign at some point in time. Cigarette smoke was safe until the harmful effects were so obvious that they were impossible to ignore. Pain-killers were safe and non-habit forming. And on and on.
With legalization, there are billions of dollars to be made, and a lot of businesses are being snapped up by big Tobacco. How dangerous it is will only be known well out into the future, and there's no real incentive to discover the dangers. People are making money and enjoying consuming the product.
I personally think it should be legalized but I do worry about moneyied interests in the field and the strength. I think its definitely harmful to young people (teenagers). Long term use is almost certainly not good for you as well as very high concentrates (dabs, edibles, etc). And driving while under the influence is dangerous as well but widely disregarded.
Peter, I'm lucky to have called you a friend. This happened to suddenly and quickly, I'm reeling. You were magic.
He exuded love and charm. He would be overjoyed to see me and give the best hugs whenever we ran into each other. He is this super accomplished person but that was never the conversation. I've known him for years and it's only now that I discover his LetsEncrypt involvement. It speaks volumes to him, he was so focused on everyone around him and filled with love for them, never self-promoting, just loving and being amazing. He would give the best hugs, and few seconds longer than most, and you could hear him smiling while he does so. Thank you Peter
Thank you for this. Captures my feelings perfectly as well. You're right about those hugs, hah! I don't think I ever even noticed before, looking back on memories that are now a decade old. Never self-promoting indeed!
