austint

@ProudofusUK @ProfByron This isn’t just a reason to be proud of being British - it’s a reason to be proud of being human

England and Portugal. One of the oldest alliances in the world. Since 1386. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇵🇹 They had sailed together. Traded together. Gone to war together. But there was a moment when it nearly ended. And the reason was slavery. Portugal started the Atlantic slave trade. In 1444. For the next four centuries they transported more enslaved people across the Atlantic than any other nation on earth. Britain joined them. For a hundred years British ships sailed the same routes. British merchants made the same profits. Then in 1807, thanks to the will of the British people, they stopped. The Royal Navy, the most powerful fleet on earth, was sent to the African coast. Not to conquer. To hunt. Every slave ship it found, it seized. Every person on board, it freed. But the trade was still going. Under Portuguese flags. So Britain went to its oldest friend and made a demand. Treaty. Portugal agreed to restrict its slave trade. Britain pushed harder. Another treaty. Portugal banned the trade north of the equator. Britain pushed harder still. Another treaty. Portugal conceded the right to let the Royal Navy stop and search Portuguese ships on the open ocean. The alliance nearly didn't survive it. Six hundred years of friendship stretched to breaking point. Portugal called it betrayal. Britain called it justice. Portugal formally abolished the slave trade in 1836. Slavery itself in its African colonies, 1869. It took sixty years of pressure. Sixty years of treaties. Sixty years of Royal Navy ships on the water. The alliance held. It still holds today. The oldest in the world. These are the stories that don't make the history books. We find them. We tell them. If they matter to you, be part of us. proudofus.co.uk/support Be Proud Of Us. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

We need a nightly news guy who comes on at 6:30 just shaking his head saying "I don't even know where to start"

I’ve just published my thoughts on the future of AI and robotics, with a particular focus on #mentalhealth. In short, I believe that without #psychedelics, an AI-driven future may fail. It may fail not because the technology won’t be extraordinarily positive. In fact, I am deeply optimistic that a post-AGI and robotics-enabled society can be profoundly beneficial for humanity, but because of the risk that the transition goes terribly wrong. Without the psychological tools to adapt, we may struggle to successfully navigate the massive disruption and change ahead of us. Psychedelics - and, by extension, $ATAI - could play a critical role in unlocking a future defined by abundance, resilience, and human flourishing.

@geraldposner @benryanwriter This is a real misrepresentation -for one thing the report proves efficacy, what it doesn’t show is that psilocybin also does LESS harm. & as someone who runs an UK advocacy group I can tell you… there is zero funding available for us. We sell T-shirts to pay for stamps!

Make no mistake @benryanwriter, I have learned from my work on Pharma, this study will not slow down the push for psychedelics. It’s accelerating, backed by a sophisticated funding ecosystem. The bottom line is that the “psychedelic treatment movement” is no longer just a scientific or cultural story—it’s a financial one. With projections pushing the market toward ~$11 billion by 2027, the incentives are enormous. The money pipeline: 1. Philanthropic capital, including the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, Bob & Renee Parsons and Tim Ferriss and a network of startup founders and investors. 2. Venture capital + biotech Companies are not just studying psychedelics—they’re engineering, patenting, and monetizing them: – Compass Pathways developing synthetic psilocybin (COMP360); Aset Life Sciences building a portfolio of psychedelic therapeutics; and MindMed and GH Research pursuing proprietary LSD and DMT-based compounds This is IP strategy, clinical pipelines, and FDA pathways—classic pharma playbooks. 3. Government funding – VA funding psychedelic research again for the first time in decades – Texas committing $50 million to ibogaine research for PTSD and addiction – Additional state-level initiatives expanding rapidly 4. Lobbying + regulatory strategy Advocacy groups and industry players are actively shaping policy: – MAPS and its for-profit arm pushing MDMA through FDA approval – Policy networks and corporate lobbyists working on “trigger laws” to fast-track access once approved This is coordinated, strategic, and well-funded. Once a pipeline like this is built, it rarely reverses direction simply because the clinical studies prove there is poor treatment efficacy

A major new JAMA Psychiatry meta-analysis just concluded that psychedelic therapy is no more effective than SSRIs for depression. Most people in the psychedelic space will read that as bad news. I think they're missing the more important question it raises. If the efficacy is roughly equal, the real question becomes the one psychiatry has been avoiding for decades: Which treatment causes less harm? The paper makes a smart argument. Since psychedelic trials are effectively always open-label, they should be compared against open-label SSRI trials rather than blinded ones. When you do that, the efficacy gap disappears. Both produce roughly the same level of improvement. I take the meta-analysis seriously. But the conversation to open up is not the one I'm seeing. If efficacy is comparable, why aren't we talking about the harm? SSRIs have been on the market for ~40 years. In that time, we've accumulated a staggering catalog of iatrogenic damage. Between 40-60% of patients experience emotional blunting: that flat, muted quality where you lose access to joy, connection, creativity, and desire. Post-marketing data show sexual dysfunction rates as high as 75%, and we now have growing evidence that these effects can persist months or years after discontinuation. The FDA carries a black box suicide warning for patients under 25. Up to half of patients who try to stop SSRIs experience discontinuation syndrome, sometimes severe enough to require hospitalization. These are not edge cases. These are the known costs of the standard of care. Now compare that to the psychedelic safety profile across not 40 years, but thousands. Psilocybin use in Mesoamerica stretches back at least 2,000 years. Ayahuasca traditions in the Amazon go back centuries. The Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece likely involved an ergot-derived psychedelic and ran continuously for nearly 2,000 years. Nassim Taleb would call this the Lindy Effect: the longer something has survived, the longer you can expect it to keep surviving. Psychedelics have passed a civilizational stress test that SSRIs haven't begun to face. Modern clinical data confirms it. Psilocybin has no known lethal dose, no physical dependence, and no discontinuation syndrome. The most common adverse effects are transient anxiety and temporary headaches. Serious adverse events across the major trials have been rare and manageable within a supported therapeutic container. So if JAMA Psychiatry tells us the efficacy is comparable, shouldn't the next question be obvious? One treatment requires daily dosing for months or years, blunts your emotional range, disrupts your sex life, creates dependence, and carries a black box suicide warning. The other involves one to three sessions, has been used safely for millennia, and the most common side effect is that you might erupt into an emotional catharsis. What would an honest risk-benefit analysis look like if we actually weighed the full harm profile?

MASSIVE BOMBSHELL: DAN GOLDMAN UNLEASHES TRUTH! Congressman Goldman just went live with FBI 302 receipts. Evidence shows Trump unzipped his pants, forced a 13-year-old’s head down, and when she bit his p*nis in self-defense, he punched her and called her a "B." The FBI interviewed her FOUR times while the case was buried. Pam Bondi lied to Congress, claiming “no evidence” of these crimes while sitting on files describing this exact assault. This is perjury and a cover-up for a predator. You don’t get to "save the kids" while your AG hides files of a child being beaten for fighting back. History will remember the enablers. We stand with the children who bit back.

BREAKING: Protestors are gathering outside of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club demanding to “Arrest the President.”

Very silly headline to run based on a comparative analysis of apples vs oranges.

@luxemiaa Somebody needs to get @dunkindonuts on this case - pull the footage! We must know! 🥯

This woman on Instagram shared: Weirdest shit happened this morning. I stopped at Dunkin to get a bagel. I pulled up to the window, gave the guy my card. When he gave me my card back, I turned to put it in my purse when I noticed a Dunkin bag sitting on my passenger seat. He hadn’t given me my bagel yet. Super confused, I ask him “did you already give me my bagel?” He says no. I hold up the bag to him. He now starts looking around confused. I see the sticker on the outside of the bag is today’s date. He asks where I got ....

@elonmusk I hear one of those moons is a Cruel Mistress but also… a Powerful Lover open.spotify.com/track/1RuKyYxS…

One day, we shall sail through the moon belts of Saturn 🪐

@thewritertype @rorysutherland yet more advice you can add for the advertisers of dishwashers

If your middle-class marriage is in difficulty and you can afford to attend couples counselling, don't. Spend the money on buying separate dishwashers, which solves the problem in many cases.

A reminder that these mushrooms helping the paralyzed are illegal. They have a LD50 50-100X safer than over the counter Tylenol. The drug war is a Pharma protection racket, dressed up in moral superiority and buttressed by the Alex Karensons of the world. @AlexBerenson

New Mexico just set aside $630K to fund psilocybin therapy for low-income patients. A historic first! psychedelicamericas.org/p/new-mexico-w…

Do you know how bad things have to be for the Irish to be defending a British PM? Lmao

i love it when i stump the IT guy. haha you thought this would be a quick ticket. just remote in, click one button, and make me look like a fool. but alas, i have fucked things up more than you could've imagined

Spotted outside Dallas… even Texas has had enough.

You know what would be nice? ONE SINGLE FUCKING CONSEQUENCE!

'I need to consult my team' is a clear NO in British English. Trump just doesn't speak the language. @BBCNews