Lester Black

follow my new sardine blog: leddder.bsky.social

This is the best cannabis reporting I've read in a long while. Kudos to @leddder! Hunting for the world's most mythical cannabis: Big Sur Holy Weed sfgate.com/cannabis/artic… via @SFGate

"Locals escaped the cold inside Wild Cherries Coffee House, an unofficial town square of Truckee. Most conversations were quiet attempts to process what had just happened." Tremendous read from @leddder for @SFGate: sfgate.com/renotahoe/arti…

@Ghitelman @janosmarton there aren't many daily psilocybin users *yet*. The first project of a legal psilocybin industry will be creating habitual use. There are lots of ways that can happen, and the micro-dosing movement is already setting that reality up.

@janosmarton Agreed! I've thought about this a ton, I think psilocybin legalization will likely look very different from cannabis There are many daily cannabis users, virtually zero daily psilocybin users, making it way harder to turn a profit from making/selling psilocybin or psychedelics

Psilocybin absolutely should be legalized eventually. But we’ve also learned lessons from marijuana legalization that suggest proceeding carefully and not letting big money take precedence over peoples’ health. Let’s start with decriminalization.

"Half a century had passed between the monk supposedly growing pot in the monastery garden and Fratis getting these seeds. Back to square one."—@leddder for @SFGate #longreads sfgate.com/cannabis/artic…

As a person with a complicated relationship to weed, I found this @leddder deep-dive into the myth and foggy future of California cannabis' "holy grail" strain to be FASCINATING sfgate.com/cannabis/artic…

Hunting for the world's most mythical cannabis: Big Sur Holy Weed sfgate.com/cannabis/artic… via @SFGate

"I just don't know what they were thinking." sfgate.com/cannabis/artic…

This is one of the darkest stories I've read lately. We can't even ask if people like the president anymore without fear of being punished. Gallup Will No Longer Track Presidential Approval Ratings nytimes.com/2026/02/11/us/…

Many news outlets have used a single podcast remark as an indicator ICE agents would be “throughout Levi’s” and have a “major, visible” presence, but SFGATE reached out to 6 law enforcement agencies who haven't heard anything to that effect. via @leddder sfgate.com/bayarea/articl…

No one knows who's behind Sacramento Valley billboard message to 80-year-old Democrat sfgate.com/politics/artic… via @SFGate

Read my latest with @stephencouncil here: sfgate.com/tech/article/o…

We could soon see class action lawsuits against LLM chatbot makers similar to lawsuits for defective airbags and asbestos. OpenAI is facing a multi-billion dollar legal risk that no one is talking about.

For decades, America's tech companies have deployed products with little regard to how they harm their users. That could end with ChatGPT.

Shark encounters hit record high in California sfgate.com/bayarea/articl… via @SFGate

How one city ended the San Francisco Peninsula's legal weed desert sfgate.com/cannabis/artic… via @SFGate

"That people can manipulate chatbots to get more information—regardless of how dangerous that information may be—is a hallmark of recent tragedies tied to AI chatbots." —@leddder, @stephencouncil for @SFGate #longreads sfgate.com/tech/article/c…

New $47M deal for California cannabis company signals optimism for new year sfgate.com/cannabis/artic… via @SFGate

A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT for drug advice. He died from an overdose. sfgate.com/tech/article/c… via @SFGate