C-Cab's recent activity
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentIt is a little unfortunate they chose tobacco, but it looks like it's because it already has high levels of the substrate needed to synthesize the psychedelics. I'm not a chemist, so I could be...It is a little unfortunate they chose tobacco, but it looks like it's because it already has high levels of the substrate needed to synthesize the psychedelics. I'm not a chemist, so I could be talking out my butt here, but I imagine there might be some ways to isolate the different compounds?
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentNope, there is an actual academic article, and this is a well-known process of doing transgenics on organisms to use them as a tool for synthesizing some drug or compound.Nope, there is an actual academic article, and this is a well-known process of doing transgenics on organisms to use them as a tool for synthesizing some drug or compound.
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentAfter coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take...After coming down from the most intense trip of your life, you forget where and when (and who?) you are. You find a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, and having the urge you light one up and take a drag...
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab LinkFood for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.Food for thought: I don't really have anything insightful to add, but I'm imagining smoking a cigarette and getting your ego totally obliterated by the combination of DMT, psilocin, and bufotenine.
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Comment on Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once. in ~science
C-Cab Link...“Magic mushrooms” make psilocybin. Tropical plants make the ingredients of the psychoactive ayahuasca. And toads secrete the mind-altering bufotenin. Now, the tobacco plant makes them all.
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One reason for the success is that tobacco plants make abundant tryptophan, so there was no shortage of the starting material. This inspired Berman and Aharoni to try making other tryptophan-based psychoactives in tobacco, such as psilocybin and its precursor. They also tweaked the plants to produce bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT, hallucinogens that the Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) secretes from glands behind its eyes.
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Trippy tobacco? Tobacco plants engineered to make five psychedelics at once.
22 votes -
Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab Link ParentI've read Lev Vygotsky - I found his sociocultural and zone of proximal development theories informative to my pedagogy! I'll be sure to check out Luria and Damasio as well, thanks for the...I've read Lev Vygotsky - I found his sociocultural and zone of proximal development theories informative to my pedagogy! I'll be sure to check out Luria and Damasio as well, thanks for the recommendations.
I wholeheartedly agree about looking beyond just neurons. I've joked with other neuroscientists that we tend to look at things only from the neck up, and even then at only just neurons when we're looking at the brain. But neurons are only a small proportion of the cells in your body, and only half of the cells in your brain!
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Comment on Playboy Manbaby - Fire To My Yard (2026) in ~music
C-Cab LinkApologies for the NSFW album cover - tried finding a link that didn't have that but no such luck. I love the juxtaposition of the upbeat instrumentals against the negative nihilism of the lyrics.Apologies for the NSFW album cover - tried finding a link that didn't have that but no such luck.
I love the juxtaposition of the upbeat instrumentals against the negative nihilism of the lyrics.
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Playboy Manbaby - Fire To My Yard (2026)
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Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab LinkFood for thought: Intelligence is a pretty poorly defined concept when it comes to the scientific investigation of it, even when we're focusing on just human intelligence - not even getting into...Food for thought: Intelligence is a pretty poorly defined concept when it comes to the scientific investigation of it, even when we're focusing on just human intelligence - not even getting into other animals! We have a bias towards what intelligent behavior should look like due to our human-centric views. I think this also biases us towards thinking about intelligence as something arising purely from neurons. While the evidence pretty clearly supports that our cognitive capabilities are largely dependent on the complexity of our nervous system, it can raise blinders on how we think about the interaction between biology and behavior.
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Comment on Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience. in ~science
C-Cab Link... ...Commonly known as the shy plant or touch-me-not plant, Mimosa pudica has delicate, frond-like leaves that fold inward when touched or shaken. They also close at night and reopen with the rising of the sun—a type of movement called nyctinasty.
In a humid tent inside a windowless room in W&M's Integrated Science Center, Vishton and Bartosh exposed these plants to cycles of light and dark and observed a curious change in their movement. "In the first phase of our experiment, we used a 24-hour cycle. On days one and two, the plants were exposed to 12 hours of darkness and 12 hours of light. On day three, the lights remained off," Vishton explained.
After around five repetitions of this cycle, the plants demonstrated increased movement in the "pre-dawn" hours on days when light could be anticipated, but not on the third day of total darkness. "This seems to suggest that the plants were able to 'learn," for lack of a better word, this three-day cycle and shift their movement in response," said Vishton.
Modeling this shift yielded a logarithmic curve, meaning the plants' movement changed rapidly at first before gradually stabilizing into a consistent pattern. "This is the same pattern we see all the time in animal learning," said Vishton. "For example, if you are teaching a rat to perform a series of actions in a certain order, you would expect to see a period of time when they're figuring out the sequence and then a gradual increase in their ability to predict the pattern."
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"Every theory I've ever read on memory and decision making always involves neurons," said Vishton. "Big surprise, plants don't have those. And yet it looks like they can perform cognitive-like functions. Just not cognitively, per se."
If plants can encode complex functions like enumeration, maybe other non-neuronal tissues can too. "There are lots of cells in animals and humans that aren't neurons. And we just assume they're not involved in learning," said Vishton. "But maybe they could be. Maybe learning is present in every cell. We've just never really studied it before."
How exactly this non-neuronal intelligence is learned, stored and called upon is a question for future experiments.
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"Typically, we don't conceptualize plants as thinking, behaving creatures, right? We think of them as reflexive objects that are responding to stimuli in a simple way," said Vishton. "But, at least to me, our results suggest that there might not be this boundary between the animal and the plant kingdom—or it might be a lot more porous than we think."
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Can plants count? Study suggests they can track the number of events they experience.
16 votes -
Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
C-Cab Link ParentSeriously! It got more and more unhinged and all these things kept happening that felt so unmoored from reality.Seriously! It got more and more unhinged and all these things kept happening that felt so unmoored from reality.
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Comment on TV series suggestions in ~tv
C-Cab Link ParentHave you watched The Rehearsal? It builds off of a concept Nathan did in the last few episodes of Nathan For You in terms of practicing for a situation and is really mind-blowing in terms of the...Have you watched The Rehearsal? It builds off of a concept Nathan did in the last few episodes of Nathan For You in terms of practicing for a situation and is really mind-blowing in terms of the scale he commits to. Not quite as haha funny, but is worth the watch.
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Comment on TV series suggestions in ~tv
C-Cab LinkCongratulations on the new addition to your family! A mix of drama and comedy shows in no particular order: Common Side Effects Heated Rivalry Letterkenny Dark Pantheon Scavenger's Reign The...Congratulations on the new addition to your family!
A mix of drama and comedy shows in no particular order:
Common Side Effects
Heated Rivalry
Letterkenny
Dark
Pantheon
Scavenger's Reign
The Mighty Boosh
Arcane
Broad City
Broadchurch
Chernobyl
The Wire
Barry
The Great
Nathan For You And if you like that definitely watch The Rehearsal
Fleabag
Our Flag Means Death
New Girl -
Comment on What is something you're holding together? in ~talk
C-Cab (edited )Link ParentGood, I'm glad you're having fun. I know some people who hated playing as the DM but none of the players wanted to relieve them so they were having a rough time. I definitely like both sides of...Good, I'm glad you're having fun. I know some people who hated playing as the DM but none of the players wanted to relieve them so they were having a rough time.
I definitely like both sides of it. I'm decent at improvising and it's fun to build the world around the characters, but it's also nice to take on a role and really commit to it in addition to not having to worry about all the prep.
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Comment on What is something you're holding together? in ~talk
C-Cab Link ParentYeah I've done this with two groups and it was pretty fun. It was a nice way of getting some DM experience under my belt without having to commit to a whole campaign. It also allowed for very...Yeah I've done this with two groups and it was pretty fun. It was a nice way of getting some DM experience under my belt without having to commit to a whole campaign. It also allowed for very different story arcs that felt very unique.
I'm thinking of floating the idea of running a one-shot for one of the players in my current group and hopefully them getting enough of a taste that they want to pick up DMing after me.
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Comment on What is something you're holding together? in ~talk
C-Cab Link ParentSuch is the plight of the forever DM. Not only do you have to curate the experience by finding maps, plotting out the general story, design encounters, etc., but it also usually falls on you to...Such is the plight of the forever DM. Not only do you have to curate the experience by finding maps, plotting out the general story, design encounters, etc., but it also usually falls on you to schedule everything too! At the very least - are you having fun being the DM?
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
C-Cab Link ParentI just discovered them up a couple days ago and absolutely fell in love with both their music and their performance. I cannot get the track Fabienk out of my head.I just discovered them up a couple days ago and absolutely fell in love with both their music and their performance. I cannot get the track Fabienk out of my head.
Going off what Queresote said, I'd be willing to bet that someone just ate a toad they caught at some point and had a really intense trip, and through trial and error they narrowed it down to the secretion coming from the eyes.