Brian Vastag

Wondering if someone can help me move accounts. Instructions say to create an alias on your new server. When doing this, the form says, **"**Specify the username@domain of the account you want to move from." So I did that, specifying "brianvastag@sciencemastodon.com" as the account I want to […]

Trying to log into mastodon.social on chrome: Error page ("Something has gone wrong on our end.") But I can log in with other browsers.

I have no idea why but it is thwarting my plan to transfer my account there.

#fediverse

Mastodon mascot saying "We're sorry but something went wrong on our end."

I have a mastodon.social account from like 2018 I never used and I was going to migrate this account (server is shuttering) to that one but when I logged onto mastodon.social I got this so I guess I won't.

@aarbrk Well there's general overlap with the entire psychedelics scene but I can't say much beyond that for kratom.

And there have been quixotic attempts to develop it into an FDA-approved therapy, including a grassroots movement...possibly the only grassroots drug-development movement in history.

Anyway, it's a fascinating story and I'm sorry I'll never get to finish the book. No one else has tackled the […]

From 2005-2010 or so I spent quite a bit of time in this subculture and developed a book project. I had an agent ready to go, and then WaPo offered me a job and I took that instead of write the ibogaine book. Then while at the Post I developed a disabling chronic illness, so the book never got […]

This is absolutely wild. Rick Perry (THAT Rick Perry) is now championing studies of ibogaine for treatment of addiction.

Ibogaine is a weird drug derived from a West African shrub. I spent quite a bit of time developing a book about it; it's being used in an unregulated fashion in Mexico, Costa […]

Rights in the US are supposed to be like the laws of physics - they apply everywhere all the time. Not anymore, thanks to SCOTUS. Someone born to non citizens, in say, Arkansas, may not be a US citizen but if they're born in California they are a citizen. That's the kind of thing this ruling […]

@rjblaskiewicz Ideologues advancing a project don't GAF about anything else.

A bleach in Hawaii with a prominent lava rock in the foreground.

A day with a dip in the ocean is better than one without. Also, this rock says hello.

Every time I open my Scrabble app it asks me if I want to start a game with Beth, who died in Dec. 2023. I'd thought with the amount of work her brother and I have done to remove her profiles, accounts, etc, this would stop happening some day but I guess the digital afterlife is forever.

Also […]

I see people getting pre-angry at Democrats for what they won't do when they are back in power.

Sure, let's have some fantasy anxieties because there aren't enough real ones.

@USpol

She's just trying to spectate a cat fight in the yard below. Pretty good yowly slap fight going on with the neighborhood furballs.

Meerkattin'

#cats

I kept going to work too for 6 months after getting sick and then I was bedbiind for two years.

Article from May: '"It’s led to him having energy zaps and stamina ebbs and flows over the last couple of months, and he felt that he had actually turned the corner right as the playoffs started in mid-April,” Charania said. “But in his own words, he had a crash right before Game 1 of this […]

In NBA circles, there's talk of a player having long covid. He recently missed time with an unspecified illness and was just traded from Boston to Atlanta. I sure hope he doesn't, but if he does, willful societal blindness to the often permanent (or very long term) nature of long covid could […]

Hawaii tourism is 'significantly down,' and experts are worried Hawaii is seeing a decline in summer travelers during peak season.

Evergreen #Hawaii tourism discourse:

- We must diversify away from tourism!
- But no astronomy.
- And only traditional agriculture.
- Oh god there are fewer tourists nooooooooooo.

https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-travel-visitors-summer-decline-20383620.php

@ckr Is....Hotel Harrington somehow not a heap of lumber and masonry splayed on the ground yet?

Filed an insurance claim with USPS which means...nothing. I will get nothing.

(If they actually honor the claim I will eat this post.)

If I disappear it's because my instance closed and I didn't bother making a new account. Probably not dead.

Some gluten-free bread is getting so good that I am very suspicious.

OTOH if I inadvertently eat wheat I start to itch everywhere in 30 seconds so I will continue to rely on the bioassay.

When dogs bark, are they using words to communicate? Dogs’ barks say a lot about how they’re feeling.

Is it because they're dumb? Or is that just my neighbor's dog?

https://theconversation.com/when-dogs-bark-are-they-using-words-to-communicate-153345

Responding to this story: https://archive.ph/20250621011425/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/health/havers-cdc-vaccines-kennedy.html#selection-941.0-941.174

You know what I'd like to see journalists do? When the admin ignores their Qs and sends propaganda-laden statements, WRITE THAT. Say, "The CDC did not answer our questions but instead sent us an anonymous statement that contained falsehoods, so the Post is not printing it."

But they won't […]

Got a press release from #MEAction today saying the only #LongCovid clinic in North Carolina, at UNC, is closing. The clinic has seen 3500 people, 70% women, and 43% had stopped working.

Dire.

Gray cat with green eyes in an Amazon box.

Box report: Still boxin'.

Businesses Cancel $1.4 Billion In New Factories, Energy Projects in May as Congress Pushes Forward on Tax Increases | E2 Cancellations now total $15.5 billion since January; nearly 12,000 jobs lost GOP districts see $9 billion in investments; 10,000 jobs disappear due to cancelled or delayed projects so far $444 million...

"The latest cancellations – including battery, electric vehicle and solar panel factories in West Virginia, New York, Alabama, Arizona and Washington – mean $15.5 billion in new factories and electricity projects have been cancelled since January 1."

$15.5B, 12,000 new jobs -- wiped out. For what?

Cancer experts told @BBCNews's "Panorama" that anti-medicine conspiracy theories are becoming more mainstream in their field, and this could be endangering lives. The show focuses on 23-year-old Paloma Shemirani, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer, and told she had a […]