#its not illegal to sell nor grow nor do. so maybe i should just go pick some and start a nice little garden in my closet

[skenpiel]

maybe i ahould do shrooms

[isimp4hawkz]

The Apothecary

(Hawks x Reader)

100% inspired from this beautiful artwork I found on pinterest ^^

This is my first time publishing any of my fics. I hope it’s enjoyable.

*Skimmed for any mistakes but I may have missed a few*

Words: 2.5k

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"Tell me something birdbrain. Did you come here in search of a remedy or did you come here to snuggle with my owls?" You scold aloud, brow lifted at the scene before you. It temporarily drew your attention away from the herbs you were blending for the person in question. If he really even needed them that is.

The man was bent over, hovering over the counter and barely burying his entire face into the soft plumage of Gamma's snowy collar, rubbing his nose into its depths, small chuckles resounding from him in his own apparent delight. Simultaneously, Thaddeus perched himself daintily onto the golden locks of his hair, managing to keep himself in place as the man's head moved about beneath him.

What shocked you is that they seemed to be genuinely enjoying his company, whereas they hardly acknowledge your existence throughout the day. It was much unlike how they'd usually act whenever someone walked into the shop. As soon as they heard that little bell chime from the entrance, both birds would take off towards their high perches on opposite ends of the room, making it in their best interest to avoid anyone new.

You didn't mind, nor question their habit. They only preferred your lone company either way, though they'd hardly show it. Much like you'd rather be with their company rather than some other person.

On that slow, peaceful evening, you'd discovered that maybe you don't know your beloved companions as well as you thought. For some reason, Hawks was some sort of an exception to them. Much more than an exception, at that.

For crying out loud, he was snuggling into Gamma and cuddling her as if she were a puppy! And she was letting him.

And Thaddeus. Thaddeus' behavior baffled you on an entirely different level. That was a bird who never permitted you any petting privileges, any time you'd insinuate a head rub, he'd screech at you and fan his wings. Very territorial, he was. At least you thought he was.

Yet here he was, God damn nesting in the hair of a complete stranger as if he'd known the man for years. As if you weren't the one who took him in when he was but a weak, fraile hatchling on the brink of death.

"I think your owls like me." Hawks chuckled, his huge crimson wings ruffling giddily when Gamma had begun to coo at his nuzzles, adoringly.

Jealousy. Blatant jealousy is what you felt. You weren't even going to attempt to hide it. You've tried endless times to get those birds to see you as their loving caretaker, showering them with love and treats and sating their every need, but to no avail. If anything, you think they see you the way a caged tiger would view its neglectful keeper, just a source of food.

You huff out a breath, subconsciously putting in more effort to mash the herbs together with the mortar and pestle than you wished.

Hawks noticed your subtle change in behavior. The way you slammed a small jar onto the counter, flicked off the cap, and aggressively shook out whatever was inside onto the cutting board. Or maybe it was the way you were mashing those herbs with a force that made him wonder if they'd somehow wronged you.

Of course; being him, he'd jumped to a brash conclusion. "Oh? Are you jelly that I'm giving the birds more attention than you?"

You stop your relentless mashing of compounds, staring ahead blankly for a moment before shaking your head. "Don't be ridiculous, I-"

"Awoh, it's nothing to be ashamed of, I completely understand."

"I'm jealous of you, actually."

Hawks blinked in confusion, lifting his head away from the owl's downy feathers and looking over at you.

"Seems like they fancy you more than they could ever me." A half-hearted smile tugged at your lips, the morose tone in your voice was inevitable.

Gamma's wide, intelligent eyes shifted to stare at you. It was like she understood every word you said. Her wings lifted, and with a few swift flaps, she was in the air. You flinched when she landed gracefully into your hair, her sharp talons clenching your head as gently as she could.

Hawks chuckled at how frozen you were in that moment, bringing up a hand to scratch Thaddeus on the chin as he stared. He marveled at the way your cheeks faintly turned a darker shade when Gamma had cooed. She'd began to pick at your head softly in a grooming mannerism.

Thaddeus shifted in Hawks' hair, suddenly growing restless.

"Wanna get closer?" Hawks asked him aloud, rhetorically, obliging to the small hoot he received in response and carefully sauntering over to you, wary of the unstable balance Thaddeus had while being on his head.

By the time he got close, you'd managed to settle Gamma down onto your outstretched bicep, but the stubborn owl only flapped back onto your head. The look on your face almost made Hawks laugh out loud, you were distraught. Torn between salvaging the rare chance at bonding with your companion, and continuing the preparation of a remedy for a paying customer.

He knew how much you cared for those birds, so much that he was willing to let you relish in the moment completely.

The smile on his face was somewhat solemn. "Don't fret witchy. I'm sure I can find some other witch who can cook up what I need."

Your brow ticked at the way he addressed you. "Excuse you. I am not a witch. I'm an Apothecary."

Hawks blinked. "Same difference."

You ignored that. "And even if you could somehow find another suitable Apothecary in the general area, I've been told by several patrons that I am the best of the best." You stated proudly, chin held up high in accordance. "The odds of finding someone more skilled than I are low to say the least."

He always enjoyed how confident you were in your craft. That confidence stemmed from true experience and skill, mastery even. You were right for claiming your profession to be deemed that high of a level, there hasn't been a single time in the past where your restoratives had let him down, no matter what their purpose served. He's glad that your clientele have spread the word of your little place, though they're restricted to hushed exchanges of whispers and secret notes passed in inconspicuous areas, out of the sight of any authorities.

The way you obtained some of your ingredients could be considered illegal if thorough investigation was to prosper, but luckily for you, that was yet to happen. No one was dubious of the little flower shop secluded between two towering office buildings at the farthest corner of the longest street in Kyushu. Hawks wouldn't dare run his mouth about its true nature to anyone, he would much rather heal his battle wounds naturally with one of your blends rather than the harsh steroids they'd stick into his body back at the commission.

"Can't deny that fact." Hawks chuckled, looking at you with apparent appreciation gleaming through his hooded eyes. "You've helped me through some tough calls, I don't think I-" He cut himself off in realization of something.

"I...I don't think I've ever thanked you."

You were quick to bring up the fact that he in fact spoiled you. Tipping you thousands over whatever price you'd ask for, as if money was nothing but a nuisance to him and he needed to get rid of as much of it as possible, it had you wondering if he would flaunt it around so carelessly wherever.

"That's different. Of course I'm gonna pay you in exchange for your meds, I'm not some shitbag. But I've never thanked you before."

Now that you think about it, it's true. The majority of times times he's come here, it's been in an urgent burst through the door, with little time on his hands to so much as greet you. You really can't recall a single time where he's thanked you, since he's usually in such a rush. Here one second, gone the next. His reputation stands firm.

Rarely have there ever been situations like this, where he's able to hang around the shop and wait patiently for you to get his order ready firsthand. You'd looked over your shoulder at him while he was appeasing the owls earlier. He had looked so calm, so sweet and tender in that moment, totally relaxed. It warmed your heart to see him like that.

His concern brought a smile to your face, how adorable to think that it would trouble him this much. "Hawks, trust me, you're fine. I know you're thankful. The proof is in the way that you pay literally five times as much as I could ever ask you for—more than that at times!"

Yup. That sounds like something he'd do, even he'll admit it. He distinctly recalls throwing a fat stack of cash at you in several of his hurried instances, not even bothering to ask for the price, or check how much was in the stack. He tilted his head aside and stuck out his lower lip in consideration of his own antics.

But that doesn't stop him from genuinely thinking that you deserve way more than what you make. You're taking one hell of a risk every time you sell another product to some shady person. He thinks you deserve to be appreciated more for that fact alone.

"Well, for what it's worth, thank you Y/n. Really, I mean it. What you do means a lot to me, more than I can put into words." He held your gaze with an adoration in his eyes that you didn't quite understand.

You've never seen seriousness cross that man's expression as well as it did right then.

He's perpetually cheerful and carefree, flirty more oftentimes than he should be. It surprised you seeing him so lacking in that notorious, glowing charisma. Maybe you'd go as far to say that in that moment, it looked like true joy was something he'd never experienced before. You couldn't even form words, rendered a gaping fish.

And maybe you would've actually taken his word for it, if it wasn't for you being reminded of the fact that the two of you had two big ass birds on your heads when Gamma and Thaddeus unexpectedly hooted in unison.

You and Hawks simultaneously broke eye contact to glance up at each other's birds, locking eyes with one another again.

It went silent for a few seconds.

Hawks' hard expression wavered hesitantly, his lip twitching in a futile attempt to remain serious. You then snorted quietly, biting your lip, and that's all it took for the two of you to burst out into a laughing fit that made you to bend over to clutch your sides, causing Gamma to flee from your head hastily and settle on her perch, Thaddeus following suit towards his respective stand when Hawks stumbled backwards a bit.

They'd managed to both ruin the moment and save it all the same, made it into something you didn't quite know you needed until it happened. A good laugh, one that had your face heating up and your cheeks beginning to hurt as the two of you only grew breathless with glee, struggling to keep your balance as you pressed your weight onto nearby objects to avoid toppling over.

The old Grandfather clock at the back of the shop had begun to chime, signaling the passing of another hour.

The sound caused Hawks to gradually come back down from his laugh-high. He submitted to that professional state of mind that subconsciously clawed at his back at times like these, once he was reminded of where he was supposed to be.

It was like someone snapped their fingers and all happiness was wiped from his face. Other than the faint pink still dusting his cheeks, it looked like the laugh that the two of you shared had never transpired.

You didn't even need to hear him say it. After you'd wiped a tear of joy from your eyes and regained your breath, you'd whirled around, right back to where you'd left off before.

A strange atmosphere settled into the shop. It grew peacefully silent, the rays of the setting sun stretched generously into the stop, accentuating gliding specs of dust in their path and lighting the room in a warm honey glow.

Hawks rolled his shoulders, wings reaching out to their maximum length in a comfortable stretch, as you bagged his things.

He'd requested a strong set of numbing-based remedies and other blends crammed with sedatives. It reminded you of the prep for some sort of illegal surgery, but you weren't one to meddle in the business of your customers.

You'd turned to hand him his bag, but were surprised when there was no sight of the man where he'd previously been.

It took a few glances around the room, you almost missed him at first, but there he was, standing before the display window, gazing distantly at the outside world under the evening glow.

Sometimes you'd catch a deep-rooted hardship in his eyes that was nearly impossible to detect. A flicker of something more, something lost long ago that he longs to have again. At times it looked like he was carrying the weight of the world in his wings and nobody knew it.

Or maybe your seclusion in your craft has run you crazy and you're just imagining it all. That's way more believable, anyway.

You'd walked up to his side, eyes trained on the lively cityscape. The city never slept, always bustling with some sort of commotion, but it was oddly calm on that evening. Nothing but nature in all its shapes and forms, like the gentle autumn breeze that shook the trees, like the songbirds softly jittering in a musical dialect only they understood, plus the ocasional car that would stroll by barely exceeding fifteen miles per hour.

Your gaze drifted back on Hawks, who has yet to notice your presence beside him.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that man’s mind, what challenges the relentless day brings him, and how he manages to come out smiling in the end.

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

In item #181 of GISHWHES, we were asked to give advice on how to become pregnant for a tenth time. We did so by writing a 2000 word essay and then tweeting it (piece by piece) for the world to see. Below, you can find all my wise words and helpful tips, just in case you ever find yourself wanting that blessed, tenth child.

People rarely ask me for tips on child rearing, nor do they ask me on what to expect during the long three trimesters of pregnancy, and that is because I have no children of my own. So naturally, I consider myself an expert on reproduction and the delicate biological intricacies that accompany human fertilization and gestation.

Now, when it comes to getting pregnant, there are three main things you need to remember: chocolate is tasty, you’ll likely crave it

prior

to conception, and third and most importantly—inform your significant other (or whomever is assisting you in the creation of your progeny) that you must have chocolate 24/7. And I realize, this may not be news to some—in fact, many of you reading this have probably had multiple children already because,

duh

—

Hershey’s

, and you have also lived strictly by those delicious, chocolatey, unbreakable rules for years. So if that is the case, then you’ve come seeking my advice on the next logical step in parenthood—

the tenfold

. When it comes to the decagonal birth, the most common concern I hear is: “What do I do when chocolate isn’t enough? How do I get to having that ultimate tenth baby, growing inside my belly baby house?” Well, first of all—your

belly baby house

is called a “womb” … you should know that by now; and secondly, you’ve come to the right place, because as a mother of 0—obviously I am only missing the number 1, so I am pretty close to this whole “10” issue, spatially. Therefore, pay close attention to the following biological, genetic as well as completely holistic methods of reaching the pinnacle that is:

the decimvir rug-rat.

The first option is: you need to become a rabbit. It’s rather simple, so don’t think the fact that you were born a human and always have been a human, and have only ever given birth to human children is an issue—it isn’t. Do you like carrots? Yes? Good. No? Well, just imagine the following does not resemble a carrot and you’ll muscle through. Now, you’re halfway there; so, following those previously mentioned three, golden, chocolate rules—wait until the timing is just right, aka, Easter, and when that moveable feast makes its way onto your calendar, that is when you need to make the trek to any Americanized grocery store and fill up your cart with as many carrot-shaped chocolate treats as you can find. Then, you must go to your backyard, or a neighbor’s backyard, or the a-typical grandparents’ backyard and hide yourself amongst the reams of tall grass. Consume the chocolate carrots while your existing nine children all pelt you with egg-shaped plastic containers, because this will not only promote fertility, but it will also act as an offering to Henose, the chicken goddess, who will slowly, but surely begin morphing you into an Easter Rabbit. The only caveat to this is that your tenth child must also become an “Easter Rabbit” when they mature; but I hear it has a great benefits package, so they will probably be better off than they would be in any human-form of employment, so really—it’s a win/win.

For some however, I understand if becoming a different species might not seem ideal. Parent-Teacher conferences for one, might be difficult—considering your last nine children are all human, and you’ll be left pooping pellets on the teacher’s desk. Your kids will find it hilarious, but the teacher might not be as amused, and it may negatively affect your human children’s coming grades. So, if you are determined to stay human yourself, then your next reasonable option for succeeding in welcoming to the world, that denarius little genetic copy of yourself—is to go into a place of religion. I don’t believe it matters which religion, because they all appear to have the same effect—people go in, and the next thing you know, they come out with a gaggle of kids trailing in their wake. There’s something about “God’s House” that promotes hyperactive fertility. Perhaps it’s the refracted light coming in through those stained glass windows—it somehow stimulates the human ovaries into producing an excess of eggs. Or maybe all the religious effigies of powerful males inspire a man’s sperm to be more devout in their work. Or, maybe it’s that all religion is secretly chocolate-based, and the baptisms involve being dunked like a Reeses peanut butter cup into a troth of delectable, satiny-brown, liquid-heaven. Honestly, I cannot be certain, because as I am sure you deduced by my having no children, I have not personally set foot into one of these religious establishments; but I am betting, if you’re human and you happen upon a house of God (or Allah, or Vishnu, or what have you), you’ll find yourself bearing that decemvirate tiny terror in no time.

Now, if that previous option didn’t appeal to you—perhaps refracted light makes you break out in hives, or seeing wooden pews lined up but slightly offset from one another, makes you uncontrollably dizzy like it does me, then you could turn your hopes downward. Go for the anti-religion. With this option, you must be careful however, because you’ll likely be dealing with demons—and you could end up giving birth to a baby goat or the Roman numeral: X.; so please, read the fine print carefully and exercise any satanic-dealings with the utmost caution. That being said though—another, valid option for impregnating yourself with that last, crowning child, is exchanging your soul for it. The powers that be in Hell usually fancy a good, ripe soul as often as they can, which gives you the upper hand (given that you have not used this method previously to obtain a lifetime of wealth or to have the chance to sleep with your high school crush … they were dreamy though, weren’t they?) You only got one soul to give, so make sure it counts. There is a very specific process to soul-selling however, so do not make the usual mistake and go sacrificing chickens in Lucifer’s name. He doesn’t care about chickens, and this will also upset Henose greatly; and then you and your children and your children’s children will all suffer a lifetime of runny eggs as a consequence.

In order to properly bargain your soul, you must find your nearest crossroads—but do make sure the roads are made of dirt, because you’ll need to be burying something at the very center point of the intersection. Attempting to bury something within a city’s crossroads will require a jackhammer and various zoning permits (the fines for illegal digging are astronomical). So, once you find a dirt crossroads, you will need to bury a tin box filled with graveyard soil, a photograph of yourself, a bone from a black cat, and finally—a yarrow. “What’s a yarrow?” you ask … I don’t know. I think he’s a Greek composer. Anyhow, once you bury the box, your demon will appear. Tell them that you want to become pregnant with a tenth child, and they will then imprint the contract invisibly onto your skin. Once imprinted, you’ll need to seal the deal with a kiss (so if your demon is hot—well then, your deal just got sweeter. If not … just pretend they’re that high school crush of yours); but a plain kiss will not do, you must first apply chocolate-flavored Lip Smackers (the kind that comes on a lanyard), or else your baby will actually end up in the demon. Then you’ll have to get into a custody battle for the child, which is never good. If you think custody courts on Earth are bad—you should see the ones in Hell. It’s just lawyers.

As with any agreement though, there will be stipulations to a demon deal—so once you have your baby, you’ll actually only get to raise them for the first decade of their life, because after that, Hell Hounds will find you and eat your face. So, in general, if you decide to make a demon deal, also make sure your eldest offspring is willing to take over the child rearing because you will not be around long enough to do it yourself … but hey, at least you got to ten!

And finally, if none of the aforementioned options appeal to you, then I have one, final suggestion—which may work if you are willing to forgo the whole “pregnancy” aspect of things. Have you ever heard of Solomon? No? Well, he was a great guy—a real thinker, solved a lot of problems for a lot of people. He lived over three thousand years ago, before the fruits of the cocoa tree were discovered and processed to become the baby-making, chocolaty delight that we insist upon today; so, you can imagine how difficult conception could be without that all important aid. Women not only had fewer babies, but some might not be able to have any at all, so they would resort to stealing the babies of others. Infant theft, or Baby-Burgle, as it was sometimes called, was such a common occurrence in Solomon’s time, that he set to the task of finding the ideal solution—and that, he did. Just chop the babies in half! This is a quick and efficient way to get two babies for the price of one. So, my advice to you is—find your most problematic child and just splice him or her in two (preferably with a laser—it’ll cauterize the skin instantly, sealing up both the old child and the new) and then, not only will he/she become another bouncing, bundle of your DNA, they’ll also only be half the problem that they previously were. This is also a great option for those of you who are only halfway to that grand “tenth child” mark. Just birth five kids, split them all down the middle and, vuala! You got ten children--- just like that! A disclaimer with this option however: invest in prosthetics.

In conclusion, any choice is bound to be fruitful if executed carefully. Don’t rely on any of those “wannabe” solutions, like storks. As we all know, the average human baby weighs much more now than they did back in the forties, so a stork’s neck is just no longer capable of carrying that kind of load; and if it tries, your little one may end up in the Atlantic, or Henose forbid—in the arms of a family who already has ten children and will just keep yours out of greed. Don’t trust storks, nor black-market fertility statues. Basically, anything with a beak … except for Henose, of course. Also, some may try to tell you that my previously detailed paths to decagonal-bliss are just as untrustworthy, and that there are actually easier ways to achieve a family of ten children. Ways like adoption, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and so on and so forth; but are any of those really as interesting? No. They are all fine ways, and I encourage you to seek out as many routes as possible in order to conceive; but please, also keep in mind the story that you wish to tell. Honestly, would you rather say: “I adopted my tenth child” or “I sold my soul to a demon and made an offering to the chicken god, Henose in order to have my tenth child”? One is obviously far more entertaining than the other.

Overall, any option you choose to bring a tenth life into this world will carry a lot of joy, but also a lot of responsibility. So please, just make sure that you are making the right choice for you, your family, and the overall world population; because really, there’s already a lot of us here. In addition: remember the chocolate. It makes your belly happy, and you know how the old saying goes: “A happy belly makes a happy belly baby house.”

[artificialqueens]

Katya and The Space Barbie (Trixya)- Squeaky

Number one reason not to buy a sex doll from a sketchy, space shop— she might come to life.

(AN: really short, smutty one shot)

The galaxy is infinite, and Katya’s horny.

Those two thoughts aren’t related, but they occur to her at the same time. The spaceship is lightly vibrating because Katya’s running low on fuel; the vibrations aren’t helping her growing state of arousal. In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to think. The safety straps around her waist and chest are tight, and the reminder of how she’s strapped down makes her squirm against the hard leather.

Katya’s sure she took a left turn at the milky way before hitting accelerate. Or…did she? The directions blur together, and her navigation system took a hit. How am I going to make it back to Mother Ship now? Ask?!

“Uh, this is Captain Zamo from Sputnik reporting in to Headquarters. I’m operating a craft without navigation. Do you copy? Over?”

“Yes, I copy. Are you lost, Captain Obvious? Over.”

Katya internally groans at the sarcastic drawl of Alaska’s voice. Great, if she wanted a tongue lashing, she’d have dialed up her mother. Now, she needs to ask for Alaska Thunder’s help. God, there had never been any other girl at Ru’s Space Academy who gave her shit like Alaska.

“I’m not lost, ‘Lasky, just not…spatially coordinated. Over.”

“That’s the definition of lost. Over.”

“I’m lost when I say I’m lost, which I’m not. Lost that is. And aren’t we all existentially lost in the scale of this never ending universe splattered with stars and sperm? Over.”

Silence.

Katya sighs and presses the voice command: “I’m lost.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Captain. Hmmm….says here you’re approaching Planet Booberella. I’m sure you’ve been there before? Over.”

“Never,” Katya lies and then flushes as she realizes she forgot to say ‘over.’

Wow, way to be obvious, Katya.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a, uh, first time for everything. Pull over for fuel and directions. Over.”

She types in the coordinates for Planet Booberella. It’s infamous for well…boobs and bombs. The women and men there are just as likely to blow you for a copper piece as they are to blow you to pieces for the wrong word.

Katya hesitates before pressing the intercom: “Bets on if I’ll get fucked or sold into space slavery? Over.”

“Bet you’ll meet an alien girl and fuck her over so bad she’ll sell herself. Conversation- OVER.”

Katya bites her lip.

Is Alaska still mad about that whole date thing? Probably. They’d ditched the food and went straight back to her Cube for ‘dessert.’ Katya remembers how she’d pushed Alaska onto her knees. God, Alaska looked so pretty, still in her spandex uniform, with her face buried between Katya’s thighs. They’d fucked on the bed and couch and table. Alaska had come apart so easily under her fingertips. While Katya hasn’t been back to her Cube in months, she bet that Alaska’s ripped up uniform is still there.

“Thanks for the help, Coordinator Thunder. Any chance for another dinner when I get back? I can’t cook, but I could microwave us some popcorn…think about it? Watch the Cult Classic Contact? Over.”

Silence.

Well, losing friends and herself in space is kind of Katya’s specialty. Sputnik’s sput-sputtering down, and Katya’s not going to bother legally landing. She zooms down to one of the Black Market Pods to get herself situated in Tittington. Fuck, why is this whole planet a bad sex pun? It’s the biggest joke in the cosmos.

Katya jumps out, breasts bouncing in her shiny suit. It’s skin tight. Just the way that she likes it. All five of the mechanic’s eyes trail down to her chest as she slides him her platinum card.

“Oi, I’d be careful going out with ‘em bullets on yer chest,” he drawls.

“You want one less eye, huh?” Katya asks as she runs her hand down her thigh to grab her lazor gun and then presses it to his throat.

The mechanic puts his webbed hands up: “Peace, peace. I’ll be done refueling and patching up in an hour. Looks like the engine’s on its last leg.”

“Do a good job, and I’ll give you a tip,” she promises, and Katya regrets her words as soon as she turns. She can feel all five eyes against the curve of her ass. Katya leaves in a huff. Doesn’t anyone in this galaxy have a heart?

“Hearts! Hearts for sale! Buy three and get a kidney for free!” An old lady, porous skin covered in green ooze, wheezes up at Katya.

She flinches. Ugh, it’s like Miss. Fame used to say back at the Academy- ask and the universe will give.

Katya amuses herself by stopping by a hologram store and flipping through the intergalactic net. She gained six new followers on her travel blog. Then Katya goes next to the local, seedy sex shop.

It’s full of gadgets and gizmos that have been scattered all over and somehow filtered down here. The shopkeeper, a cute drag queen named Violet, winks at her when she enters. They’d met and fucked the first time she’d got here, and Katya had never been held down so tightly or fucked so thoroughly as she had with Violet. Katya leans against the counter-

“So what you got in stock, V?”

“Oh, possessed butt plugs, ancient dildos, and…I shouldn’t be showing you this but…” Violet bounces to the back and comes back with what looks like a Barbie Doll box. Katya’s spent enough years in her childhood watching reruns to recognize it. But what’s it doing in a place like this?

“I’ve heard of a lot of fetishes, doll…but never any involving barbie dolls?”

Katya takes the package in her hands. This doll has big blonde hair up in a pigtail and a Judy Jetson hooker-like costume. What is even supposed to be? A flight attendant? Katya turns the box over and reads ’Here To Satisfy Your Wildest Fantasy- it’s Trixie! Your favorite sex Barbie proves that life in plastic IS really fantastic.’

“It’s small for travel convenience,“ Violet explains. “But press the button in the back, and it blows up. She’s got interchangeable parts for maximum pleasure- since Barbies don’t have any. I just got it in stock, so I don’t know what the reviews are.”

“So I’m like…your test rat?”

“Mm, more like a sexual experiment,” Violet says with a wink.

Katya is horny, but she’s never tried out a sex doll before. From what’s heard of online, they usually come with a remote control, but the Trixie doll doesn’t have any. 

Violet puts her hands on Katya’s: “What do you say? Buy it now, leave me a sweet review on Yelp, and I’ll give you 50% discount, Kat.”

Katya does like the novelty of getting a souvenir from Booberella. Maybe Alaska will get a laugh out of it too…if she ever speaks to her again.

“You know what? I’ll take it." 

Katya pulls out a couple gold coins from her back pocket. She’s glad Booberella is part of the galactic union. It makes buying sex toys all the more convenient. Violet bites down to check that they’re not fools gold and then sends her off with a wink.

Katya’s pleased to see that five-eyed-creep has taken good care of her Sputnik. He leers at her and then the doll pressed up to her chest. God, I’m horny but not blind. 

She salutes the planet with a middle finger as she zooms off. 

Then she’s back on course for the Mother Ship. Katya sets the ships destination and leaves it for auto pilot. She’s still tightly strapped into her seat as she swivels her chair around to inspect the doll she bought. Katya gently runs her hands across the plastic casing. 

"Hello, there, Trixie,” she whispers. “Now, let’s see how you look outta the box.”

Katya tries to be neat, but she ends up tearing it open. Looks like a Barbie that she saw in the kiddie holograms. She never had one when she was little, so Katya takes a moment to run her hands through her soft, blonde hair. Skin’s tight and plastic. Katya flips up the white skirt, but it’s smooth- neither cunt nor cock to be seen. 

She undoes the velcro of the back of doll’s dress to find a switch. It’s OFF right now. Does she really want to do this? Maybe just to say that she tried it.

Katya slowly undoes her seat belt, sucks in her breathe, and presses ON. 

There’s a mechanical 'whirring,’ and the doll gets so hot in her hands Katya drops it.

Fuck!

There’s a bright white flash, smoke, and Katya’s bent over, coughing. 

“Thank god someone got me out of that box,” comes a voice from the mist. 

“W-who are you?”

“The voice of god- who the fuck do you think it is? I’m the sex doll you just bought and turned on. Though gods know why considering my line’s been recalled,” a humanoid figure parts the white. “Name’s Trixie. Mattel. Trixie Mattel.”

“Uh, Katya. Zamo. Captain of Sputnik and- what do you mean recalled?”

If Katya was low key aroused before, now her nipples are pressed against the tight latex of her uniform. Trixie’s got thighs like woah!, flirty eyes, and lips that should be illegal. There’s something eerily android-like about her movements, but the thought only turns Katya on more. 

“Mhm, seller musta ripped you off.”

Fuck Violet.

“W-what do you mean? Are you broken?”

“Rude,” Trixie simpers as she stands between Katya’s spread legs. “I mean that’s why they say- our line is prone to uh…malfunctioning?”

“In what way?” she gasps as Trixie drapes herself on her lap. Katya runs a hand up her smooth thighs, admiring how shiny they are. When Trixie giggles, her silicone breasts bounce. They may be fake, but Katya really wants to slide her hands up and squeeze them. But even with Trixya leaning forward against her chest, Katya feels strangely shy. That’s new. 

“We’re self conscious. Can pass the Turning Test. Hate to be turned off and put away….and,” Trixie dramatically pauses as she leans in. “Known to have something as horrible as feelings.”

“Are you telling me a planet called Booberella accidentally created sentient life before anyone else in the galaxy?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But,” Katya gulps as Trixie cups her face in her cold hands. “H-how’d you know all this? I just took you out of the box?”

Trixie’s lips are pressed up to Katya’s lips as she whispers, “This isn’t my first game of make believe.”

Of course Katya ends up with a sentient fucking sex toy. Trixie smirks at her horrified expression as she straddles her lap. Those thick thighs have a rubbery texture, and Katya’s not sure what to expect when Trixie impishly raises up her skirt. There’s…nothing?

“Tell me which you prefer,” Trixie demands. “I’m trying to follow the steps I was programmed with- one, assess owner. Two, satisfy needs. 

"Both? Either? Uh….”

Trixie rolls her eyes: “Problem with assessing is when people don’t know what they want. Let’s start slow and then I’ll give you what you need, baby.”

Baby? The words make Katya flush and squeeze her legs together as Trixie pulls her in for a kiss. Her lips are glossy and soft. She tastes like cherry lip gloss. It doesn’t feel much different from kissing Alaska. 

Trixie unzips her uniform, so Katya’s heavy breasts are revealed. Then her wet tongue is lapping at them. Katya squeaks and clenches at the sudden pleasure. Everything’s gone from 0 to 100 real quick. Trixie’s pink tongue slowly circles her nipples, and Katya flushes as she runs her hand through Trixie’s soft hair. 

“A-ah, Trixie, fe-feels-”

“Good?” Trixie finishes for her, pulling back so a strand of saliva still connects her to Katya. “I’m state of the fucking art. Just filled with crippling, existential dread.”

Katya gasps- “Me too!”

Trixie tilts her head, confused, as she leans back. Her eyes are filled with a curiosity that doesn’t seem natural to the rest of her. Katya didn’t know what she expected, but it’s not this. This is straight out of a TV show. Straight out of a science fiction novel. Straight out of a poorly set up porno. 

“So you don’t mind the idea that I’m filled with anxiety and neurosis and could disobey you? Put you over my knee and spank you just because I wanted?”

Katya bites her bottom lip and gasps, “S-sounds kinky to me.”

Trixie smirks: “You’re a fun one, huh?”

Then she sinks down onto her knees, and Katya hasn’t had anyone since Alaska. So the sudden tickle of Trixie’s fingertips against her still covered thighs makes her gasp. Katya’s wriggles out of her uniform, flushing under Trixie’s eyes. She’s not wearing any underwear.

“Such a good little captain, aren’t you?” Trixie demurs as she presses a fleeting kiss right above Katya’s wet desire. She’s been on space Odyssey for a month, so she’s not as neatly shaved as she’d like to be. But Trixie doesn’t seem to mind. Why would she?

“Oh, so how do I, uh-”

“Open your legs,” Trixie orders with a snap of her fingers. 

Fuck. Katya’s eyes flutter at the direct command, and it sends a sudden shiver up her spine. She loves to be told what to do like that. She’s always commanding her ship, so it’s nice to have someone else take the control away from her. Katya never thought a recalled barbie doll would be the one to do it for her. 

Then Trixie’s burying her blonde head between Katya’s thighs. Her tongue’s lapping at Katya’s wet folds. She whimpers. Katya runs her hands through Trixie’s hair again, and, wow, this feels real. It is real, isn’t it?

“I-I’ve ne-never met someone like you,” Katya gasps.

“You’re not really the type who usually buys a sex toy.”

“I’m glad I did,” Katya admits, flushing at the vulnerability, as Trixie looks up at her through her long lashes. The wetness of Trixie’s tongue has her leaking all over her Captain’s chair. Her toes curl in her space boots, waiting for more. 

“Your better than the last one,” Trixie says, and her eyes are softer than before. She leans up to press a kiss against Katya’s lips. She squirms in her seat, and Katya needs something more. 

“Trixie,” Katya gasps, unsure what’s she even asking for.

“Shhh, I got'chu, baby,” Trixie whispers. 

There’s a soft whirring and when Trixie lifts up her skirt again, there’s a toy strap there. Katya wants to try out all her functions, but she bites her lip at the sight of the phallic toy. Trixie roughly pushes her around, so Katya’s turned and pressed up to her chair. She holds the safety straps, arching her back in anticipation. 

Then Trixie’s pushing inside of her, and Katya mewls in pleasure. She’s been on edge, humming with low arousal all day. Finally, Trixie’s got a hand wrapped in her hair and is moving into her just like she needs. 

“There you go, Captain Zamo,” Trixie whispers in her ear as she fucks her, speeding up her pace. 

“A-ah,” Katya moans.

It’s the position in her chair, and the way Trixie’s pulling her hair as she fucks her that pushes Katya over the edge. With a whimper, Katya squeezes her thighs together. The liquid spills down her shaking thighs.

Oh, god, she loves how helpless she is. 

Trixie pulls out of her and whispers: “Again, Captain?”

“F-fuck yeah.”

Katya’s horny, and the universe is so wonderful. This is exactly what she wanted. 

[frightfullyfantastic]

It is sad to think that the first few people on earth needed no books, movies, games or music to inspire cold-blooded murder. The day that Cain bashed his brother Abel's brains in, the only motivation he needed was his own human disposition to violence. Whether you interpret the Bible as literature or as the final word of whatever God may be, Christianity has given us an image of death and sexuality that we have based our culture around. A half-naked dead man hangs in most homes and around our necks, and we have just taken that for granted all our lives. Is it a symbol of hope or hopelessness? The world's most famous murder-suicide was also the birth of the death icon -- the blueprint for celebrity. Unfortunately, for all of their inspiring morality, nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue. >A lot of people forget or never realize that I started my band as a criticism of these very issues of despair and hypocrisy. The name Marilyn Manson has never celebrated the sad fact that America puts killers on the cover of Time magazine, giving them as much notoriety as our favorite movie stars. From Jesse James to Charles Manson, the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes. They just created two new ones when they plastered those dipshits Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris' pictures on the front of every newspaper. Don't be surprised if every kid who gets pushed around has two new idols. > We applaud the creation of a bomb whose sole purpose is to destroy all of mankind, and we grow up watching our president's brains splattered all over Texas. Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised. Does anyone think the Civil War was the least bit civil? If television had existed, you could be sure they would have been there to cover it, or maybe even participate in it, like their violent car chase of Princess Di. Disgusting vultures looking for corpses, exploiting, fucking, filming and serving it up for our hungry appetites in a gluttonous display of endless human stupidity. > When it comes down to who's to blame for the high school murders in Littleton, Colorado, throw a rock and you'll hit someone who's guilty. We're the people who sit back and tolerate children owning guns, and we're the ones who tune in and watch the up-to-the-minute details of what they do with them. I think it's terrible when anyone dies, especially if it is someone you know and love. But what is more offensive is that when these tragedies happen, most people don't really care any more than they would about the season finale of Friends or The Real World. I was dumbfounded as I watched the media snake right in, not missing a teardrop, interviewing the parents of dead children, televising the funerals. Then came the witch hunt. > Man's greatest fear is chaos. It was unthinkable that these kids did not have a simple black-and-white reason for their actions. And so a scapegoat was needed. I remember hearing the initial reports from Littleton, that Harris and Klebold were wearing makeup and were dressed like Marilyn Manson, whom they obviously must worship, since they were dressed in black. Of course, speculation snowballed into making me the poster boy for everything that is bad in the world. These two idiots weren't wearing makeup, and they weren't dressed like me or like goths. Since Middle America has not heard of the music they did listen to (KMFDM and Rammstein, among others), the media picked something they thought was similar. > Responsible journalists have reported with less publicity that Harris and Klebold were not Marilyn Manson fans -- that they even disliked my music. Even if they were fans, that gives them no excuse, nor does it mean that music is to blame. Did we look for James Huberty's inspiration when he gunned down people at McDonald's? What did Timothy McVeigh like to watch? What about David Koresh, Jim Jones? Do you think entertainment inspired Kip Kinkel, or should we blame the fact that his father bought him the guns he used in the Springfield, Oregon, murders? What inspires Bill Clinton to blow people up in Kosovo? Was it something that Monica Lewinsky said to him? Isn't killing just killing, regardless if it's in Vietnam or Jonesboro, Arkansas? Why do we justify one, just because it seems to be for the right reasons? Should there ever be a right reason? If a kid is old enough to drive a car or buy a gun, isn't he old enough to be held personally responsible for what he does with his car or gun? Or if he's a teenager, should someone else be blamed because he isn't as enlightened as an eighteen-year-old? > America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality, and people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity. Deep down, most adults hate people who go against the grain. It's comical that people are naive enough to have forgotten Elvis, Jim Morrison and Ozzy so quickly. All of them were subjected to the same age-old arguments, scrutiny and prejudice. I wrote a song called "Lunchbox," and some journalists have interpreted it as a song about guns. Ironically, the song is about being picked on and fighting back with my Kiss lunch box, which I used as a weapon on the playground. In 1979, metal lunch boxes were banned because they were considered dangerous weapons in the hands of delinquents. I also wrote a song called "Get Your Gunn." The title is spelled with two n's because the song was a reaction to the murder of Dr. David Gunn, who was killed in Florida by pro-life activists while I was living there. That was the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people killed someone in the name of being "pro-life." > The somewhat positive messages of these songs are usually the ones that sensationalists misinterpret as promoting the very things I am decrying. Right now, everyone is thinking of how they can prevent things like Littleton. How do you prevent AIDS, world war, depression, car crashes? We live in a free country, but with that freedom there is a burden of personal responsibility. Rather than teaching a child what is moral and immoral, right and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the laws that govern us are. You can always escape hell by not believing in it, but you cannot escape death and you cannot escape prison. > It is no wonder that kids are growing up more cynical; they have a lot of information in front of them. They can see that they are living in a world that's made of bullshit. In the past, there was always the idea that you could turn and run and start something better. But now America has become one big mall, and because of the Internet and all of the technology we have, there's nowhere to run. People are the same everywhere. Sometimes music, movies and books are the only things that let us feel like someone else feels like we do. I've always tried to let people know it's OK, or better, if you don't fit into the program. Use your imagination -- if some geek from Ohio can become something, why can't anyone else with the willpower and creativity? > I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, though I was begged to be on every single TV show in existence. I didn't want to contribute to these fame-seeking journalists and opportunists looking to fill their churches or to get elected because of their self-righteous finger-pointing. They want to blame entertainment? Isn't religion the first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, sing songs and dedicate themselves in eternal fandom. Everyone will agree that nothing was more entertaining than Clinton shooting off his prick and then his bombs in true political form. And the news -- that's obvious. So is entertainment to blame? I'd like media commentators to ask themselves, because their coverage of the event was some of the most gruesome entertainment any of us have seen. > I think that the National Rifle Association is far too powerful to take on, so most people choose Doom, The Basketball Diaries or yours truly. This kind of controversy does not help me sell records or tickets, and I wouldn't want it to. I'm a controversial artist, one who dares to have an opinion and bothers to create music and videos that challenge people's ideas in a world that is watered-down and hollow. In my work I examine the America we live in, and I've always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue -- it's been happening every day for a long time. -MARILYN MANSON (May 28, 1999) http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/columbine-whose-fault-is-it-19990624

[patrick-watson]

We Are All Low-Skilled Workers Now

BY PATRICK WATSON

The news headlines after last week’s jobs report proved it again: Life is hard (and getting harder) for low-skilled workers. Illegal immigrants take their service industry jobs. Robots take their manufacturing industry jobs.

According to the media, many low-skilled workers have simply given up. They’re dropping out of the labor force, going on welfare, overdosing on drugs. Their lives are terrible, and everyone wants to help.

Here’s an idea how to help low-skilled workers: STOP calling them “low-skilled” workers!

It’s not only insulting but also often inaccurate. Words matter. The way we describe people makes a difference.

I would probably drop out of the labor force too, if politicians, economists, and journalists called me “low-skilled” every day. Nobody wants that label.

And thinking about it, I really am low-skilled in some ways. We all are.

What exactly is a “low-skilled” worker?

Usually, the term refers to those with little formal education—high school dropouts or high school graduates with no college.

That’s problem #1. We presume high school gives a person job-related skills. Often, this is not the case.

For that matter, even a college degree doesn’t necessarily equip you for any particular job. I know many college graduates whose degree has little connection to what they actually do at work. Some make a lot of money, but it’s not at all clear that college gave them the edge. They had other advantages as well.

I’ll admit, it’s true for me too. I went to college and even earned a master’s degree. On paper, I’m not “low-skilled.” But that’s true only when I’m writing about economics and finance. Put me in most other jobs, and I’m definitely low-skilled.

For instance, I saw a news story last week that described welders as low-skilled workers. That’s not so. Welding takes skills that I don’t have, despite my being supposedly high-skilled.

In the last decade or so, I’ve observed a growing tendency in the mainstream media to call any kind of blue-collar job low-skilled.

That is clearly untrue: car mechanics are highly skilled, as are home improvement contractors, plumbers, and licensed electricians.

But in the eyes of the elite, academics and white collar professionals are high-skilled, and anyone working with their hands is low-skilled. (These elite are the same people that didn’t see a Brexit or a Trump victory coming.)

A dangerously out-of-touch distinction, as you’ll see in a moment.

AI is coming to your workplace

This whole concept of “skill” is meaningless without context. Bear with me.

There's no doubt that automation is indeed taking jobs away from humans. So far, we’ve seen this trend mostly in repetitive assembly-line work.

Machines excel at doing the same thing over and over again. They don’t get bored or tired. They don’t need coffee breaks or demand raises. They work 24/7 and never complain.

So as someone who sits in a nice cubicle and uses their brain all day, you don’t have anything to worry about, right?

The bad news: The machines are coming for your job too. Employees of Japan-based Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance recently learned this the hard way.

Starting this month, Fukoku will replace 34 claim adjusters with IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology (no relation to me). Turns out the AI system reads and evaluates medical documents and other information faster and better than humans can.

It’s also much cheaper. According to Quartz:

Fukoku Mutual will spend $1.7 million (200 million yen) to install the AI system, and $128,000 per year for maintenance, according to Japan’s The Mainichi. The company saves roughly $1.1 million per year on employee salaries by using the IBM software, meaning it hopes to see a return on the investment in less than two years.

I have known enough bean counters to tell you that they will jump at a two-year payoff. They can give the human workers a generous severance, grant themselves a big bonus for being so smart, and still come out ahead.

The trend toward AI replacing humans in the workplace is not some sci-fi fantasy anymore. Nor is it just affecting factory jobs.

The technology to replace highly skilled white-collar workers exists right now… and an iconic American company will happily sell it to your boss tomorrow.

You may think your job is complicated and no machine can do it. I’m sure the Fukoku workers thought the same thing.

It’s happening in the US too. At Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm, legendary founder Ray Dalio has a team building software he thinks will automate most day-to-day management decisions… the kind currently made by highly paid C-suite executives.

You can see where this is heading. As soon as one AI proves it can replace you, another AI will tell you you’re fired. Maybe it will change the lock on that room that used to be your office too.

AI systems get better every day. They learn faster than you do, and if they haven’t already surpassed you, they will. The only question is when.

We’re all low-skilled compared to AI

In theory, the economy should create new, as-yet-unimagined jobs to replace those that are being automated. It did in past technology-driven revolutions. But the transitions took a while, and people suffered in the meantime.

This is a key difference between humans and other resources.

If the economy has surplus oil, the oil is happy to sit inside a storage tank and wait until somebody needs it. It doesn’t worry about feeding its family or how to pay for health insurance, nor will it abuse prescription painkillers to ease its anxiety.

Surplus human workers do all those things and more. Many economists don’t get this distinction. They plug “labor” into their models and assume we will behave like inanimate objects.

And this problem is only getting worse, not better.

As I said above, “low-skilled” always has context. If the context is AI, and the AI keeps getting smarter, then more of us will slide into that low-skilled category.

At some point, education won’t matter. Even with three doctoral degrees and speaking 10 languages, you’d still be “low-skilled” compared to the AI.

There is some good news, though.

This process is ultimately self-defeating. At some point, there won’t be enough people with enough money to buy whatever the machines produce, because the machines will have put us all out of work. That can’t continue indefinitely.

Meanwhile, we all ought to have more respect for “low-skilled” workers… because the rest of us aren’t far behind.

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[theconservativebrief]

The coffee shop in my Brooklyn neighborhood has a chalkboard outside. It usually reads something like, “Our soup of the day is coffee.” Recently, though, it’s had a marijuana leaf on it, drawn in green chalk.

Recreational marijuana is not legal in New York state. What the coffee shop is selling is CBD-infused lattes; CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, is a non-psychoactive compound found in the cannabis plant. Out of curiosity, I bought one. It cost $9 and tasted like a latte with that hint of marijuana herbiness you get from a weed cookie. Google research informed me I would not get high but would be calmer, less anxious, maybe a little sleepy. I have no idea if I felt anything at all. Mostly, I felt like I just spent $9 on coffee.

My coffee shop is not unusual in selling CBD products. In New York, and all over the country, you can find CBD oil in convenience stores, CBD vapes in smoke shops, and CBD tinctures and topical creams in beauty stores. You can buy CBD dog treats in Chicago, a $700 CBD couples massage in Philadelphia, and CBD chocolate chip cookies in Miami. CBD is also being combined with ice cream, savory snacks, and cocktails. Even Coca-Cola is reportedly working on a CBD-infused beverage.

CBD exists at the confluence of three huge consumer trends. The first is the herbal supplement boom, a $49 billion-a-year industry that has seen rapid expansion since about 2010. The second is the rise of the anxiety economy, in which all sorts of products, from fidget spinners to weighted blankets, are pitched as reducers of the mild panic of everyday life. And the third is the near-overnight creation of a legitimate cannabis industry, thanks to the spread of marijuana legalization.

The exact legality of CBD is tricky. The Drug Enforcement Administration maintains that CBD is federally illegal but will not bother going after anyone for possessing or using it. Many argue that a provision in the 2014 farm bill allowing industrial hemp pilot programs, mostly aimed at the textile industry, actually makes non-THC use of cannabis legal; the much-delayed 2018 farm bill would make CBD and industrial hemp legal nationwide if passed as it stands.

It doesn’t really matter: The result is that anybody, in any state, can seemingly buy CBD online or in a local brick-and-mortar shop without fear of arrest. That availability made CBD at least a $350 million industry last year; some estimates suggest that by 2020, annual sales of CBD products could top $1 billion — and some say it already has.

The fast-casual chain By Chloe recently introduced a line of CBD baked goods called Feelz by Chloe. Leslie Kirchhoff/By Chloe

Dez, a Middle Eastern restaurant in New York City, offers soft-serve ice cream topped with CBD-infused olive oil. Dez

Despite this, CBD is something nobody knows much about, and certainly nobody is monitoring it properly. CBD is widely marketed as a supplement, despite the Food and Drug Administration saying it does not qualify as such (this is because it is an active ingredient in drugs which are either approved or under investigation to be approved). CBD goes largely unregulated by the agency; on the FDA’s FAQ page, a vague answer maintains there are “many factors in deciding whether or not to initiate an enforcement action.” The Department of Agriculture handles research grants and pilot programs for hemp, but that’s where its involvement ends.

Research and regulation of cannabis in general is decades behind other crops and drugs because of its long prohibition. We’re in the early stages of a chaos period that will last a decade at minimum — a substance has to be legal in order for scientists to figure out how it works and for the government to figure out how to ensure it’s safe. Clinical trials take years to complete and will have to build on each other to create a competent understanding. Coupled with modern technology’s ability to disseminate truths, half-truths, and complete lies, this means we’re in a phase ripe for scams, intentional and not.

Both researchers who work with CBD and professionals who actually grow the raw material — those who best understand this compound and how it interacts with the human body, the people with the most investment in and knowledge about it — are skeptical to the point of scornful about consumer CBD products.

Esther Blessing is a professor and researcher at NYU who performs and reviews clinical trials on CBD’s effectiveness in treating post-traumatic stress, anxiety, substance addiction, and other conditions. Speaking about widely available and unregulated CBD oils, she says, “This is the main scam, snake oil thing going on out there now.”

CBD is about as poorly regulated and understood as a product this popular can possibly be. It’s not accurate to say that CBD, as a whole, is bullshit. From a medical perspective, it’s promising; recreationally, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t mean the stuff you’re buying works.

Anyone who tells you anything definitive about what CBD — or THC, for that matter — does to your body is lying. Nobody knows. The legitimate research out there is extremely limited, and the slow drip of legalization — medical use, then personal use, federally illegal but permitted by certain states and cities — has made it incredibly hard for researchers to do their jobs.

Here’s what we do know: The cannabis plant contains a wide variety of chemical compounds, many of which fall under the broad category of cannabinoids. There are more than 100 — exactly how many, we’re not sure. The best-known and certainly most profitable are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Both of these compounds stimulate the same receptor in the brain, called CB1, but have differing effects on the brain. Researchers aren’t totally sure why.

It may have something to do with the fact that THC stimulates that CB1 receptor a lot, in turn triggering the psychoactive effects of marijuana like disturbed sensory perception, impaired motor skills, and anxiety. Conversely, CBD stimulates CB1 very lightly, causing some effects that seem downright opposed to those of THC including relief from anxiety, stress, and hyper-excitability.

Anyone who tells you anything definitive about what CBD — or THC, for that matter — does to your body is lying

Unlike with THC, CBD’s effects aren’t limited to that single receptor. These effects are not precisely known, though CBD certainly has some impact on CB1’s sister receptor (CB2) as well as a receptor called 5-HT1A. When the 5-HT1A receptor comes into contact with a material that agonizes it, the effects can include reduced anxiety and increased calmness.

The limited studies out there indicate that CBD has, in its various interactions with the brain and immune system, some anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety effects. It can balance out the effects of THC by reducing the anxiety THC sometimes brings, and many in the industry are big on “broad spectrum” or “full spectrum” configurations, which use many cannabinoids at once.

There are a few ways to get CBD into your body. The most common, used in both clinical trials and consumer products, is via an oil in which CBD, which is naturally soluble in fat, has been dissolved. CBD oil can be taken orally, inhaled as a vape, or applied topically. Topical application is supposed to work sort of the way Icy Hot does, affecting a local muscle area specifically to reduce aches and pains, but the other methods produce full-brain and -body effects.

Ingesting — think CBD lattes, edibles, or just a drop of oil on the tongue — is likely much less effective than inhaling, says Blessing. When CBD-containing oil is ingested, it wants to join the other fat in your body; most of the CBD taken this way will just stay in that fat, inert and never getting to the brain. When inhaled, CBD bypasses the digestive system, which wants to store fat.

For ingested CBD, that fat solubility is a problem. “[Ingested] CBD has a very low bioavailability, something between 6 and 15 percent, which varies between people,” says Blessing. Because ingested CBD is so inefficient at actually getting to the brain to stimulate CB1 and other receptors, the doses shown to be effective have to be very high. “There’s no evidence that doses below 300 mg of CBD have any effect in any psychiatric measure,” says Blessing. “And in fact, dose-finding studies show that the lowest clinically effective dose of CBD for reducing anxiety is 300 mg.”

The only study that has tested the bioavailability of inhaled CBD is from 2014; it found a bioavailability of about 25 percent for 100 mg and 200 mg doses of CBD using a Volcano vaporizer. (The topical lotions are even less studied; there have been no clinical trials on them at all.) This is more efficient than ingesting CBD, in the same way that vaporizing THC is more efficient than eating it. To get an effect, you should ingest a different amount of CBD than you’d inhale … but how much is that? How much is too much?

CBD is most commonly consumed via an oil in which the compound has been dissolved. AFP/Getty Images

The few CBD studies out there give us limited information, and hardly any about recreational CBD use. One study gave people different amounts of ingested CBD (100, 300, and 900 mg), as well as, for comparison, a placebo and Klonopin; those people then had to give a public speech, an action associated with high levels of anxiety in the broad populace. Neither 100 mg nor 900 mg, nor the placebo, had any effect. The 300 mg dose, though, did have a measurable calming effect on heart rate, blood pressure, and anxiety. (The Klonopin also worked.)

This indicates that CBD has what’s called an inverted bell curve of effectiveness; it works within a window, like Goldilocks’ porridge. Another study showed success in treating social anxiety with doses of 400 mg, though the study was small — just 10 patients.

Other studies have been done in lab animals, or in vitro (meaning in a test tube, using animal brain tissue). Those studies have found anxiety-reducing effects but only at midlevel dosages, in the range of 10 to 20 mg per kg. As an example, one study found that CBD can, in rats, be an effective anti-inflammatory painkiller — at 20 mg per kg. It’s not a direct translation, but that dosage would be somewhere in the range of several hundred milligrams for an adult human.

“There is a huge void of research in terms of confirming most effective dosing for various symptoms,” says Eric Baron of the Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute, who has written several papers about the effects of THC and CBD on headaches, “so most of this is done by trial and error and self-titration.” Yes, most of the research on CBD is being done by consumers who are just … trying stuff.

“The standard dosage, I would say, is around 20 mg per serving,” says Joshua Tavares, the general manager of Clover Grocery, which sells a wide variety of CBD products including gummies, tinctures, and topical lotions. (Tavares describes the shop, which also sells artisanal potato chips, as a “bougie bodega.”) “The main benefits that we touch upon when selling the products are that CBD is helpful for anxiety and providing you with a sense of calm. I would say it’s our top seller since we brought it in. The CBD category in general is really booming right now for us.”

Flower Power, which sells CBD-infused coffee to cafes like Caffeine Underground in New York City, puts 5 mg of CBD in each serving of coffee. The company, like many involved in the sale of CBD, is extremely careful about what it says regarding CBD’s effects for fear of FDA intervention. The standard language for CBD packaging and website documentation is similar to that of many supplements (think: milk thistle, echinacea, elderberry, turmeric) and is some variation on: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or ailment.”

Flower Power coffee packs contain 5 mg of CBD per serving. Flower Power

“I’ve got to be really careful what I say when it comes to preaching about benefits that CBD can bring,” says Richard Roocroft, the vice president of global sales and marketing for Flower Power. “We just say, have a cup of coffee once a day to keep the doctor away.” I ask about his dosage and whether he has information indicating it has any effect. “To answer your question, ‘Do we have the studies?’ No. We have nothing that would support that,” he tells me.

“We’ve found that an effective dose for psychological issues, like stress anxiety, generally tends to start out at 6 mg and can go up to 20 mg,” says Zachary Clancy, a horticulturist and clinical herbalist at the Alchemist’s Kitchen, which sells a wide range of CBD goods at its retail store in lower Manhattan and also sells wholesale to restaurants. (Clinical herbalists can complete any of a variety of educational programs and apprenticeships to gain that title.)

Clancy says his dose estimates are based on a book called CBD: A Patient’s Guide to Medicinal Cannabis: Healing Without the High. The co-author of that book is Leonard Leinow, the founder of Synergy Wellness, which calls itself a “hand crafted artisanal CBD cannabis collective.” He is not a doctor or a scientist, but he is a sculptor of erotic bronze pieces, like a yin-yang symbol made up of two interlocking penises.

These dosages are pretty standard in the consumer CBD industry and, per the research available, nowhere near the doses proven to be effective in clinical trials. NuLeaf Naturals, a prominent online CBD seller, sells 240 mg of oil for $38.50. It does not specify dosage but measures its CBD concentration in single drops; there are 100 drops per bottle, each containing 2.4 mg. You would have to take the entire bottle, according to Blessing, to get close to the absolute minimum dose that studies show might be effective for reducing anxiety. A $3 squirt of CBD oil on your ice cream or coffee? Probably right around 10 mg. You’d need 30 times that amount to get to the levels at which researchers have found stress-relieving results.

Roocroft explained his company’s low dose by saying, “Everyone’s different, so when it comes to microdosing, they can control their cup of coffee, which is a 6-ounce serving per brew.” He’s not the only person I talked to who used the term “microdosing.” Blessing says he’s misusing the term. Microdosing means using very small amounts of very powerful drugs; sometimes, this can have extremely mild or even totally different effects from what is considered a full dose. But the key is microdosing still has a provable effect.

“If you use a tiny amount of psilocybin, it still does something,” says Blessing. “Microdosing with psilocybin still has effects biologically, but there isn’t any evidence that low doses of CBD, like 5 mg, do anything at all.” The only study I could find indicating that low doses of CBD have an effect concluded that a rare form of childhood epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome is treatable using 10 mg of CBD. For anxiety in adults? Nothing.

Research on low levels of CBD is, you guessed it, incredibly limited; just a single paper on the medical research database PubMed specifically looked at CBD in these low doses, as a treatment for Crohn’s disease. (It was not found to have an effect.) As such, it wouldn’t be fair to say that 5 or even 20 mg of CBD oil in your coffee is proven to do nothing; that hasn’t been proven. It’s more accurate to say that 20 mg of CBD oil in your coffee has never been proven to do much of anything, and related research indicates that’s probably way too low of a dose to have any measurable effect.

“To answer your question, ‘Do we have the studies?’ No. We have nothing that would support that.”

I tell several sellers of CBD food and drink what I learned from Blessing and ask what they think. “Return customers who come back, and swear by it and love it, buy two at a time to stock up for the week because they do find it to be very helpful,” says Tavares. Clancy echoes this: “We rely a lot on consumer feedback and testimonial, and generally it’s positive when taking that minimal amount. Now, that very well could be a placebo effect, but either way, people have come back and reported significant benefits when it comes to easing social anxiety.”

Is it possible that all of this is just … the placebo effect? It feels condescending to suggest that, given there are hoards of people who love their CBD tinctures and gummies and claim effects from it. It’s a tremendously rude thing to say, hey, you’re all being hoodwinked. But the placebo effect is much stronger than you might think.

“Placebo response always needs to be taken into account for any treatment being studied,” says Baron. “Placebo response is actually quite high in many pharmaceutical trials, for example. In fact, there are many treatment trials for various medications and other treatments where benefit responses to placebo are actually higher than the treatment itself being studied.”

One study found that placebos sometimes work even when the subject knows it’s a placebo. Another, using that same public speaking setup that CBD studies have used, found that anxiety treatments are particularly susceptible to the placebo effect, with 40 percent of placebo-treated patients showing a decrease in anxiety symptoms while tasked with speaking to a crowd.

So is it possible that despite all this anecdotal evidence, low-dose CBD is a placebo? Sure, because, say it with me: We don’t know anything about CBD. “Unfortunately,” says Baron, “we are nowhere near close to having any definitive trials on effectiveness for most symptoms claimed to benefit from CBD with trials that are scientifically relevant, such as prospective randomized placebo-controlled trials.”

The Alchemist’s Kitchen and Clover Grocery are high-end stores that cheerfully tell customers where they source their products from and only stock brands with similarly transparent sourcing. This CBD usually comes from cannabis plants farmed in Colorado or Oregon, or, increasingly, states not normally associated with the cannabis trade. EarthE CBD, a prominent online seller of CBD products, for example, sources from local farms in New Jersey; it also publishes lab results on its website showing that its products have been tested to have no THC and the amount of CBD the company says they should have.

This is a weird Wild West time for CBD, and these companies are doing their best. They are not the norm. A potentially larger problem than dosage is the lack of accountability and dearth of information about the ingredients found in most CBD products sold across the country.

New York’s Hudson Hemp farm grows industrial hemp, which is used to produce CBD isolate. Jeremy Sachs Michaels/Hudson Hemp

“Not all CBD on the market is created equal, and there is really a lack of understanding about even what cannabis is, let alone CBD,” says Melany Dobson, the chief administrative officer of Hudson Hemp.

Hudson Hemp began growing industrial hemp through a New York state pilot program that began in late 2017. Industrial hemp is extremely low in or entirely free of THC and is grown for fiber, hempseed oil, and, increasingly, CBD. Hudson Hemp grows Cherry Wine, one of several varieties, or strains, of the cannabis plant that have been bred to remove THC (which remains illegal in New York) and maximize CBD yield. Some strains are naturally high in CBD and very low in THC; others are high in THC and low in CBD; still others have similar levels of each.

CBD is derived by growing cannabis, drying it out, pulverizing it, and then, often, using a rotary evaporator filled with an ethanol solvent to extract the CBD. (There are some other methods, but the ethanol one is common.) It’s a pretty old and fairly low-tech technique, but it’s effective. What you end up with is, hopefully, about 99 percent pure CBD in the form of white powder, which is called CBD isolate. (Some CBD is billed as “full spectrum,” which means it contains other things from the cannabis plant, like a bunch of other cannabinoids, but there’s no formal definition for full spectrum.)

Hudson Hemp, like all cannabis farms in New York, has to get its CBD powder tested by one of only a few reputable labs approved by the state; if it contains more than 0.3 percent THC, it’s illegal.

Hudson Hemp caters to high-end CBD companies, and its accountability is unusual. Vast amounts of CBD products are sold online and in stores without any documentation or transparency. Online retailers say whatever they want. Big marketplaces, from eBay to Alibaba, sell mysterious vials of oil with odd labels, and people buy them.

These products are from places like Xi’an Lyphar Biotech Co. Ltd., which doesn’t mention that it’s one of the largest CBD sellers on Alibaba on its website, let alone reveal where it’s sourcing its CBD from. There are big companies and small companies, companies that provide elaborate chemical charts and companies that have no online presence at all. There are companies that run their goods — either as raw materials or as consumer-stage final products — through lab tests. There are those that say they do but provide no information on what the labs found or which labs tested their products.

Everyone wants a piece of CBD, and nobody is watching. Remember: There’s no regulation by the FDA or anyone else. An investigation by Natural Products Insider, a trade publication for the supplement industry, revealed that CBD producers are, at best, claiming to follow “good manufacturing practices” without any official oversight. It’s illegal to sell something that isn’t what its packaging claims it is — that falls under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission — but nobody is doing onsite testing.

To get caught, a consumer or partner would have to report a product to the FTC and/or FDA, and those organizations would have to work out among themselves whose job it was, and then they’d have to actually go investigate, all while the product remains on shelves.

“Not all CBD on the market is created equal, and there is really a lack of understanding about even what cannabis is, let alone CBD”

So how can you be sure that your CBD oil actually contains what the package says it does?

Blessing told me that two clinical managers of pharmaceutical companies she knows have performed tests on various CBD oils they’ve found for sale, just out of curiosity. (They declined to talk to me on the record.) Some of these products had no CBD in them at all, they told Blessing. Some had levels of THC that exceeded the federal limit.

That lines up with one of the rare instances of FDA testing. In 2016, the FDA tested several “CBD oils,” ultimately issuing warnings to eight companies. Some of those oils were found to contain no or barely any CBD, and many contained illegal quantities of THC. For example, Healthy Hemp Oil’s “Herbal Renewals 25% CBD Hemp Oil Gold Label” contained 8.4 mg/g of THC. Sana Te Premium Oils, which sold 25 mg “CBD oil” capsules on Etsy, contained between 13 and 19 mg/g of THC and less than 0.1 mg/g of CBD.

This isn’t simply an issue of legality, but one of safety. “If you have just, say, 8 mg of THC, that’ll have an effect,” says Blessing. “That’ll get you high. That could impair driving.”

Blessing also notes that in lower doses, like 5 mg or even less, THC does about the same thing that CBD does in very high doses: lightly stimulates that CB1 receptor. It is not impossible that if you’re actually feeling something from a CBD supplement, it’s because that supplement contains some THC. Or who knows what else!

Blessing’s clinical manager contacts did not perform formal studies on CBD. They didn’t want to open themselves up to legal challenges from the CBD companies, and in any case saw very little reason to bother challenging a product with a name like “100% Pure organic cbd oil hemp seed oil for skin with cheap price” that ships in bulk from Alibaba. They see a market littered with items like this and assume that no customer would reasonably assume it’s of high quality.

They’re wrong, of course, because this stuff sells like gangbusters.

Researchers like Blessing are legitimately excited about CBD. It shows real promise in treating previously intractable disorders like schizophrenia, and without the destructive side effects of existing drugs. Still, that doesn’t mean CBD is harmless. Research on drug interactions with CBD is in its infancy, but what is known within the medical community is that CBD can cause serious problems for people taking certain classes of drugs, namely SSRIs (a group of antidepressants including Zoloft and Prozac) and opioids.

“CBD inhibits the cytochrome P450 enzymes that break down important psychiatric drugs,” says Blessing. CBD isn’t the only substance that messes with the body’s ability to metabolize these drugs — both St. John’s wort and the humble grapefruit are unfriendly — but CBD is comparatively poorly studied. The way CBD inhibits those enzymes could dramatically raise the levels of SSRIs or opioids in the system, potentially leading to an overdose.

Clancy readily admits that potential interactions could be dangerous and says that educating customers is a major part of the Alchemist Kitchen’s approach: “We want to make sure that [our customers] have a well-rounded understanding of the medicinal applications of CBD, because right now it’s being thrown in everything, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

CBD has drug interactions with SSRIs and opioids. Jeremy Sachs Michaels/Hudson Hemp

The Alchemist’s Kitchen makes it a point to tell customers everything they know, or think they know, about CBD, and to emphasize that if CBD is going to be a regular part of their lives, they should consult with a doctor to make sure they won’t have any adverse reactions. Your bodega guy, who’s selling a little jar of CBD oil right next to the Dentyne Ice gum, almost certainly isn’t doing the same.

“If you’re taking Prozac or some other medication, you really need to think carefully about what you’re doing, because it can harm you, and you should talk to your doctor about it,” says Blessing. Blessing does note that while the drug interactions are potentially very serious, the doses in consumer CBD products are so low that the risk is likely minimal. Regardless, the fact that CBD has drug interactions should indicate that it is, at least sometimes, in some doses, actually doing something.

And that’s what’s maddening and fascinating about CBD: It isn’t bullshit. Crystals are bullshit. Himalayan salt ionizers are bullshit. SugarBearHair apparently doesn’t contain what it says it does, though it wouldn’t work better than a well-balanced diet even if it did. CBD, though wildly understudied, is not bullshit. In fact, the FDA just approved its very first cannabis-derived drug, a CBD-based epilepsy treatment called Epidiolex. The dosage for Epidiolex starts at around 2.5 mg/kg and is increased to 5 mg/kg, so a 150-pound adult would settle onto a dose of just over 340 mg per day, though the diseases it targets start in childhood.

Even some of the claims made by recreational CBD sellers aren’t bullshit, in the abstract. CBD really does show some anti-inflammatory properties. It really does have anti-anxiolytic effects, in certain situations. Of course, it’s the scammy nature of herbal supplements that a seller can say something like “CBD has been indicated to reduce anxiety” (a true statement!), even though the actual product you’ve got in your hand has never been indicated to do so. Nutmeg, for example, will act as a dangerous psychoactive drug at high levels, but it would be deranged to put “scientific research has shown that nutmeg can get you high as hell” on a pumpkin spice latte. It’s correct, but it’s also incredibly misleading.

We don’t know how CBD affects the brain in any kind of depth. We don’t know which doses and delivery methods are best for different outcomes. We don’t know how CBD interacts with most other drugs or foods. We don’t know the differences between the effects of isolates and full-spectrum preparations. We don’t even know how many cannabinoids there are. California, for what it’s worth, seems aware and concerned about this whole thing.

But a lack of data does not hinder capitalism; it is, rather, a huge help. When nobody knows anything, you can say — or imply — anything. More importantly, you can sell everything.

Original Source -> CBD, the super-popular cannabis compound, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[bbnnfeed-blog]

Navigating The Topsy-Turvy, High Stakes World of ICOs: Is There A Platform For That?

New Post has been published on https://bnn.io/news/navigating-topsy-turvy-high-stakes-world-icos-platform/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=socialpush&utm_campaign=SNAP

Navigating The Topsy-Turvy, High Stakes World of ICOs: Is There A Platform For That?

The global ICO market’s rapid emergence has been well documented. Percolating along at a frenzied pace for months, this space is now flush with scores of projects vying for attention and investment interest.

Amid this trend, the prevalence of scams and pump-and-dump schemes has escalated, creating uncertainty among many potential investors. A recent  Wall Street Journal investigation, in fact, discovered that nearly 20 percent of 1,450 projects were clearly frauds. This has led to increased attention on the part of regulatory bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in terms of the monitoring of these unregistered “utility tokens.” 

In addition, the move on the part of Facebook, Twitter, and Google to ban crypto related ads, has created a chilling effect on crypto projects and the promotion of these campaigns. Meanwhile, there has been a pronounced drop in prices on cryptocurrency markets leaving many investors skeptical and with fewer resources to put toward ICO investments.

The great innovation that ICOs brought to the table was their ability to remove a great deal of the friction associated with startup fundraising. But now with regulatory constraints, questionable projects, and a crowded ICO market, it’s becoming increasingly challenging for the average investor, even experienced ones, to make informed decisions about various ICO/STO opportunities.

Mike Finch

We here at BBNN recently interviewed Mike Finch, co-founder, and COO of ICO Alert, a trusted platform of active and upcoming Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offerings (STOs) for his views on this rapidly emerging space. ICO Alert arguably has the most comprehensive list of Pre-ICOs (also referred to as pre-sales) and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). It has published hundreds of in-depth ICO Alert reports, delivering insight into past, active, and upcoming ICOs. It also maintains a highly popular Alert Podcast, which features exclusive interviews with the largest founders and thought leaders in the blockchain space. Here are a few of Finch’s thoughts from the interview: 

Take us back to mid-June and the SEC announcements that neither bitcoin and ether are not considered securities. What are your thoughts about these developments and what sort of impact will they have on token sales?  

MF: Yes. In many ways, it was a good day for the crypto-sphere. Essentially, Ether was determined not to be a security by the SEC. And there was a handful of other informal guidance by a gentleman at the Yahoo finance summit as well.  Lots of great news all around.

But I don’t recall that it specifically determined one way or another whether or not ERC20 tokens will be considered securities.

MF: No doubt, there are still some missing pieces from what I’ve been told and heard. Either way, it is good news as we, hopefully, move towards further regulatory guidance at a minimum. Obviously, some of these guidelines that were presented are not formal. They are not written into law. But it does give folks more information on how they should be conducting a token sale.

In other words, those in the ICO space should not see this as definitive?

MF: No. Clarity seems to be happening in baby steps. We will take it when we can get it. I hope it comes sooner rather than later.

So talk to us about ICO Alert and its value proposition for users?

MF: Absolutely, let me give you a brief history. ICO Alert was originally designed by my brother and me just for us, never as a website [or business] for anyone else. But we very quickly discovered a need in the ICO and cryptocurrency industry. Prior to us launching, it was very difficult for the average person to figure out which ICOs were raising money. ICO Alert came along as a comprehensive resource for the different token sales that are out there. We list ICOs, STOs, and Airdrops on our platform. We’re completely independent, which allows us to be comprehensive.

Describe the scope of your information gathering efforts?

MF: We’ve listed nearly 4,000 ICOs since the business launched on April 1, 2017. So if you look at Investing.com or your ICO Bench, or whatever the case, you’ll see that they do not have nearly as many token sales as we do. We don’t tell people what to invest in. Rather we give them the information they need to go through and use their own metrics to make their own decisions.

Describe the typical user of your site?

MF: Our typical user is one who has only been in the ICO space only for a couple of months or maybe weeks. A big problem we have in the space is ratings. A lot of sites have a lot of traffic and are giving out ratings that are completely subjective or, much worse, are paid for. What you have are a lot of new users searching for information [and] metrics, trying to make their own decisions. The problem is that the data they’re receiving is inaccurate, incomplete, or simply biased for some financial incentive.

How can this be changed?

MF: What I think it’s going to take like any other new asset, is education. In other words, the user needs to take the time to educate themselves. Cryptocurrency has been and continues to be considered a get rich quick scheme, one where you can spend a couple of days on it and immediately make a ton of money. In reality, that’s not the case. There are tons and tons of layers to understanding how to invest in cryptocurrency and where the value is. And the same case exists for ICOs. I think we’re coming to a realization in the ICO space that this isn’t as simple as throwing your money at these projects and then selling the token at a higher price anymore.

Reports continue to circulate in the media world about crypto heists and all of those ugly sorts of things that hurt the integrity of the space. How pervasive is this from your vantage point?

MF: That’s certainly a big question with many layers, one that’s not easy to answer. I think the majority of the time users are not falling victim to scams or having their cryptocurrency stolen. But reading about this in the media time and time again can make you feel like that might be the case. Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party solutions coming out to address these concerns.

Like?

MF: Hardware wallets are a big one. These projects continue to expand their offerings so that you don’t have to store your cryptocurrency on any exchange. Exchanges getting hacked, I would guess, are the most common way people are losing their cryptocurrency. Having a hardware wallet and understanding how it functions, how to communicate with it, how to store your various tokens on that wallet is a great first step.

In general, what are some cautionary tales in terms of what the average everyday person should be mindful of in terms of investing in an ICO?

MF: For example, there are a handful of things that we are doing at ICO Alert to make sure we are not listing scams. We want to make sure that these projects are holding themselves accountable and not doing something that is detrimental to a user. But more directly to your questions, newbies who are seeking to get into the ICO space certainly should start with things like Satoshi’s (bitcoin founder’s) white paper and basic information on how to store cryptocurrency on a hardware wallet. Then there are some big barriers to entry in the ICO space that, as ICO alert continues to grow, we hope to address. The biggest one is that [to] contribute to most ICOs you have to use bitcoin or ethereum, or even NEO. Communicating with an ICO via a smart contract can be very complicated. Understanding that process, finding those resources that are going to help with understanding that process, is going to be key before one actually look into which projects they want to invest in.

Talk with us about the regulatory environment. What are your opinions on that? Do you think it’s a good thing? Or will it create enormous barriers for the ICO space?

MF: That’s a great question [and] one that we constantly debate in the office. Honestly, this is probably the biggest barrier right now in terms of the continued growth of cryptocurrencies or ICOs. There are certainly some pros that regulation could bring, while at the same time really creating some unnecessary barriers to the space.

Can you elaborate on this a bit?

MF: Sure. If you look at ICOs for example, their main draw is that now anyone can fund a startup, whether you have ten dollars in Africa or a million dollars in New York City: you [can] fund one. You don’t need to be an accredited investor. You can do it online, you can, supposedly, access all the information you need to make that decision. But if now, at least in the United States, ICOs are illegal; you have these barriers that don’t allow a large portion of the investing world to contribute to what should be a decentralized, low barrier to entry investment vehicle.

So how do you think all of this will eventually shake out?

MF: It will be interesting for sure. Hopefully, we find some solution that is halfway, one where some compromises are made. But right now a bigger issue is easing some of the concerns among those out there who are seeking to raise money for their entrepreneurial project. It’s important for them to have a mechanism like ICOs for funding their startups or ideas. Otherwise, the United States and other countries are going to fall behind when it comes to innovation.

What are you looking to contribute to this quest at ICO Alert?

Our largest goal for 2018 is to collect anywhere from 150 to 200 data points on every single ICO, STO, and Airdrop that has ever existed. We’re not filtering our list by those who pay us. Nor are we filtering the list by some sort of subjective rating. We aren’t doing top 50, top 100, anything like that. We simply intend to collect information—we’ll be done relatively soon—for every single ICO that has ever existed so that we can be able to share this data with the average, everyday person. We’ll also be sharing it with institutional players: hedge funds and more traditional financial bodies who need this data. We believe we can present this information in really unique ways to our users so that as they continue to learn about which projects they think will be most successful. We’re super excited about unveiling these new projects this year and towards the beginning of next year.

Finally, what do you think is on the horizon for the remainder of 2018 in terms of ICOs and STOs?

MF: Another great question. Well, I am far from a fortune teller. But I do think that a lot of what occurs the remainder of this year is going to have to do with regulation. In particular, there is an opportunity for security tokens to take off this year if the regulatory uncertainty continues. I think there is an important context to consider in terms of why security tokens have a much longer road to travel than ICOs did. Custody is a big one. The ease of use or launch between  STOs and ICOs are completely different.

Tell us more here?

MF: For a crypto asset like an ICO to have grown from where there were under 100 in 2016 up to nearly 2,000 in 2017 — that didn’t come simply because people were investing in them. A lot of that had to do with the fact that anyone could launch and ICO given that its a brand new crypto asset that’s unregulated and uses a decentralized token model to raise funds.

STOs don’t benefit from that same thing, and they have a lot of big questions that still need to be answered. Custody, as I said earlier, is a huge one. I am not convinced that STOs will be able to move quickly enough to take advantage of the current landscape. I think they will likely exist in the future but will act more as a tokenized version of the current securities out there.

And?

MF: I think there is plenty of room for both ICOs and STOs. We list both on our site, so we are neutral. I just think STOs will exist more for those securities that already exist [and]  for those larger companies that are trying to cut costs in various ways. ICOs will continue to exist for the much smaller startup—the company trying to raise three, five, ten, twenty million versus massive 100 million dollar rounds like you’ve seen with Telegram and others. It certainly will be interesting to see how all of this eventually shakes out.

Michael Scott is Editor-In-Chief of Blockchain Business News Network

[futureeco100]

Matt’s Soapbox: The City of the Future Part 2 A few months ago, I postulated some elements of a City of the Future in a rather longwinded post. I talked some about the need for better foot and bike access, energy distribution and conservation, and food production. These are all challenges that I think are worth facing for all of us, for a great many reasons. More and more people across the globe will be living in cities in the coming years and decades. If we’re all going to be living in relatively small areas, we darn well better do it right. But what is right for one city will not be right for another. This idea of a Smart City is not a one size fits all kind of thing. Geography and culture are deeply important factors to consider in the design and construction. A city in or around a desert might be full of open architecture, designed to capitalize on air flow for both power and cooling. It would likely capitalize on wind and solar power, and would be greatly concerned with heat reduction as well as water retention and reclamation. A city deep in the interior of say Canada or Russia, might would more likely be concerned with heat and food production. Geothermal and wind might be the best focuses. Or biofuels created by algae in vats. And of course, a city on a coast line would be far more likely to seek power from the forces of the tide, and be concerned with flooding and water desalination. And that’s not even getting into any exotic city concepts like oceanic floaters or extraterrestrial colonies. The creation of future cities will be about a lot more than just energy and food. It will be about quality of life. And I hope, it will be about a much wider idea of quality of life than many might consider on the surface. For the sake of ease and familiarity, I am going to focus on an East Coast United States city for much of my musing (though, this being me, there will likely be many asides). So, what do I want to see in my city? You know I want pedestrian and bike access. I want some of Bill Nye’s weather-tight bike paths. A web of these passages stretching across the greater DC Metro area would be a great start (even without the great idea of the showers and laundry service). And things like universal wi-fi are kind of a given. Well run public transportation that gets you to the places you need/want to go whenever you need to be there would be a huge help (the public transit in this region is a giant, tangled mess that doesn’t seem to ever be going to where I need to go, when I need to be there). And I want those green spaces. Right now, the Metro area is pretty good with green, though there’s always room for improvement. One thing we need to adopt is the covered roadway some European countries have started using. Not only do they help reduce local heat pollution, create greenhouse gas capturing green zones, reduce noise pollution, and look nice, but they also give wildlife more natural bridges to go where they need to go as well as rich potential for parks and community gathering places. Along with an increase in green spaces, increased levels of urban and rooftop gardening, and the reduction of pollutants, I would hope to see an increase in bees, among other things, perhaps driving a more healthy side-business of local honey production along with other locally grown produce (and maybe even more free range chickens and such). And yeah, I want to see those tower farms in whatever way can be made to work. Perhaps the actual Vertical Farm is a pipe-dream (I don’t think so) but some variation of that idea can, must, and will work. An essential truth of the future is that we’re going to have to grow a lot of food for a lot of people, and traditional farming will not get the job done. Getting beyond all the drawbacks of traditional farming, from pollution creation to poor land use, it can not grow enough food for the population we will have. But one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately that I’d like to see in my City of the Future is something that will likely turn a few heads (and maybe some stomachs). I want my clone burgers. Along with hydroponic/aeroponic produce, rooftop vegetables and honey, and all that sort of thing, I want my ‘meat-vat’ grown beef (or whatever). See, I’m a meat lover. And I’m an animal lover. And I don’t see those two as mutually exclusive. I don’t think hunting or meat-eating is immoral (though calling hunting a sport is misguided to say the least). But I do think needless cruelty toward animals speaks poorly of us as a civilization and a species. The idea that animals don’t feel pain would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad. And keeping chickens, pigs, cows, and the like penned up in their own filth for their entire life is obviously not the best thing for the animal, nor in the long run is it the best thing for us. I would not advocate the elimination of meat from the human diet, but I would like to see a return to ‘free range’ livestock. That sounds great (like organic farming SOUNDS great), but it’s completely impractical on the scale that’s needed to feed current or projected populations. Enter stem cell grown beef. No, it’s not ready for primetime yet. But it’s coming, and soon. Cultured beef is beef. But it was never a cow. It never lived, suffered, and died. It doesn’t need to eat, walk around, fart, procreate, or any of the other things a cow does. It consumes far less resources and creates far less pollution. And, assuming proper conditions, it’s not going to carry any diseases or other various things that get into our meat supply today. So, what I want to see, as I bike through a park (perhaps right above a highway), is a vendor selling clone beef burgers. Even more, I want to see him competing with the guy next door selling cultured tiger meat, or dolphin, or whatever (what about mammoth?!). Because once we can create that meat artificially, we don’t have to harm the creatures it comes from anymore, and wouldn’t that be nice for everyone. Again, I’m not saying we should make the growing and slaughter of animals illegal, but less necessary. This would also allow those with money to pay more to get naturally grown meat, allowing the farmer to hold less population of animals, allowing the animals a more roomy and healthy environment. Naturally grown meat would become a specialty item largely affordable for middle class and wealthy folks, kind of like how ‘locally grown’ and ‘organic’ stuff is today. Personally, I don’t think I’d ever feel the need to buy ‘natural’ again (assuming they can get the texture and taste right, which seems pretty likely). And, as the population continues to move to cities, and those cities become more and more self-sustaining, decreasing the reliance on mega-farms, there will be more and more land to let nature take its course, more land to raise animals, to let herds grow larger, stronger, and healthier. Wouldn’t it be something to see the rebirth of the old time cowboy as we take our first steps into the stars? And this same beef-based idea should work just as well with fish and other creatures of the sea, creating a specialty industry while reducing the dangers of over-fishing. I recently visited a farmer’s market, which was a fun excursion and a glimpse into the potential of urban farming. If more and more people live in cities, there is more and more need of food. Traditional farming requires vast stretches of land that by its nature must be far away from cities, requiring costly and polluting processes and several steps of middlemen to get that food from the ground to the table. Urban farms could reduce a great deal of the waste and pollution of that system. Be it the towering vertical farm at the end of the block, or the rooftop gardens of my neighbor, or the bee hives of that guy down the street, I should be able to head over to one of the open green spaces (perhaps covering the nearby Route 60 or the Capital Beltway) and shop for the various things I might need. Sure, I won’t be able to find everything there. I’ll still need to go to the grocery store to pick up some imported foods and various other things. But, I’ll be able to keep a bunch of my money in the local economy, while helping to reduce the waste and pollution created by our current, outmoded supply chain. And heck, if the vertical farms work as well as they might, I could even get some of my exotic fruits and vegetables from just down the street. What I keep finding as I look more and more into the future of cities, into technology, and into better living is that there is no magic bullet. There is no single fix. But, that’s kind of the best part. There are a million little things that can make life better, a million little things you can do yourself, in your own way to fix the world a little bit at a time. Folks my age or less have been bombarded for most of their life with the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle mantra. And look, that sounds great. But it’s not perfect. Reduce? Absolutely. How much packing material do you need? How much plastic? Why get a bag if you don’t need one? Reuse? Sure. I re-use plastic bowls I get from the Chinese take-out place all the time. I have a whole apartment filled with discarded furniture. I try to reuse what I can. And I’ve gotten away from bottled water, ‘cause that’s just a giant environmental middle finger. But then there’s recycle. You know, recycling some things is a great idea. Things like metal and glass. But a lot of stuff we recycle, we do to make ourselves feel better…but we’re actually causing more trouble, wasting more energy and creating more pollution than if we just threw the stuff out and made more. Though, with new technologies coming along every day, maybe there will be a time when those soda bottles and foam peanuts can be ground up, fed into a furnace, then pumped into feeding vats for some new strain of algae. I don’t know. So, reduce and reuse, for sure. And if you cover the first two, and do the third when it makes rational sense, that’s a big help. But there’s more you can do. Grow plants. Grow them on your window ledge if that’s all you’ve got. Grow them on your roof if you can. Foster green zones. Use the power of the vote to get parks in your area. I saw an article online I can’t track down now, about a group of people trying to turn the no-parking zone in front of New York City fire-hydrants into mini parks. These small patches of green would, in their small way, help clean the air, better absorb water run-off, reduce heat, and beautify the neighborhoods. And by their nature, they would be better at keeping people from parking in front of the hydrants. Any damage sustained by emergency vehicles would simply grow back. How many little projects like that could be done in any city? And a city of the future would be built with such things in mind. We’re learning to work with nature, not against it, so that both might thrive. It has been said that soon, 80% of us will be living in cities. This is a dramatic change in population distribution, and will no doubt come with its own boons and problems. One thing I’ve found fascinating is the idea that there will a rebirth of city states. I don’t mean politically…or, not especially politically. I mean in terms of resources. New cities will generate their own power, grow their own food, and probably make their own goods. At least when it comes to the basics. I see the population centralizing, while the supply chains decentralize. Why build gigantic, polluting, wasteful farms in rural, central states, when you can build small, efficient, clean running farm towers every few blocks? Why build a giant dam in one state, to power a small town in another state? Why have thousand mile tubes to pump natural gas from one part of the world to another, doing who knows what to the land, when you can generate power from the Sun, the wind, and more in the very buildings you occupy? Cities can and should become self-sufficient, or very close to it. If that happens, the land between cities will likely turn back to its natural state, or at least more natural state. No need for giant farms, no need for massive dams, no need for fracking or drilling for oil. There’s simply no need. So, will these independent cities, with no pressing need to import the essentials of life shut themselves off? I should certainly hope not. My city of the future would be connected. Not just through telecommunication, which I sure hope keeps improving. But through air and rail. High speed rail could link major city hubs. Airports featuring luxury airliners running on more energy efficient fuels might hop into low orbit on short trips around the globe. And at least one space elevator will let me reach orbit and who knows what beyond. And all of this has potential of happening within my lifetime. While not every piece of technology is perfect yet, and not all the kinks have been worked out, mostly all that is lacking is the will. I hope I’m not alone in wanting to build the city of the future, where we can buy ethically cultured, cloned beef burgers with aeroponically grown lettuce and pickles and locally baked bun, walk through a park that rests atop a bustling highway, listen to the buzzing of the bees and the singing of the birds, as the photocells of my jacket charge my phone and you feed your trash into an algae based reclamation unit. A city where I can walk to work, hop a bike to see a friend, and maybe the rail to visit my family for an afternoon, all while surrounded by growing plants and clean air.

[101percentindia]

My Pursuit Of The Ancient Malana Culture Resulted In Learning A Greater Lesson

Why I regret my trip to Malana, and maybe you should too.

I was roughly woken up one morning by three of my closest friends. With excitement in their bloodshot eyes, in a rush of a breath, they said one word: Malana.

Malana, or what I knew of it then, was a small village in the Parvati valley whose mere mention could get stoners worldwide frothing at the mouth. The high altitude and untouched soil was said to produce some of the best hash in the whole world. My friends wanted to go for obvious reasons but I smoked neither weed nor hash (I promise, ma). Making a trip all the way to this tiny village just for drugs made me very apprehensive. I shook my head wildly, refusing flat out. At first. But my friends, being my friends, knew just how to convince me. "Why not?" they prodded "You're always looking to write about something exciting. Well, here it is. The whole village is cut off from the rest of India and is visited only by tourists. Oh, and the villagers are said to be descendants of Alexander the Great and his army during their campaign in India."

I perked up. The few articles I found online echoed their words and cinched my interest in Malana. A day later, I sheepishly approached my friends and let them know I had changed my mind.

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The long and winding road to Malana

We set out for Malana by hiring a local taxi from the foothills of Jari. Our driver Kumar was a chatty old local man, with a bright smile and a great tolerance for my constant stream of questions. He had lived his entire life in the region and made his income by driving tourists between Jari, Manali, Kasol, Malana and other nearby hippie hotspots. Along the dusty, bumpy path cut out of the mountain, we ascended into the clouds.

The car would only take us only so far; we would need to trek the remainder of the way up to the village. Although the month of July meant most of India basked in warm sunshine, there in Parvati valley, in the cold winds and relentless drizzle, we shivered through our multiple sweaters. Seeing how we clearly had no idea what we were in for, Kumar agreed to guide us all the way into Malana. Just before we began the trek, he grabbed an empty water bottle from his car. "For the spring near Malana. The purest, most sacred water! It will cure any cancer!" Politely nodding, I swallowed my cynicism and continued with the trek.

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The charging stream that locals consider sacred

Rock after rock, we heaved ourselves up, taking in the jaw dropping scenery in the moments we spent waiting for the last of us to catch up. Layer upon layer of green mountains as far as the eye could see. In the drizzle, everything around us had a sheen. A sweet, earthy aroma drifted in the breeze. All around us, long-stemmed Marijuana plants danced.

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Cannabis grows naturally and wildly in Malana. Image source: 365hops.com

Kumar told us about the people of Malana, a group isolated from the rest of India not merely by altitude but also culturally and linguistically. Malana was considered one of the oldest democracies in the world. "So disputes and disagreements are not sorted out by the regular Indian judicial system?" I asked. "No, all matters are resolved internally. They very rarely seek help from the outside world." "What about the difficult matters of guilt and innocence? Who decides that?"

"Goats" he answered simply.

"Goats?"

"Yes, the two arguing parties each bring forward a goat. Both the goats are poisoned. The goat that dies first belongs to the guilty party."

This answer bewildered me. To play dice when it came to justice? "What about incredibly heinous crimes? What is the equivalent of a life sentence?" I asked. Kumar thought carefully. "I haven't heard of such cases recently. But I remember rumors that they just strap the person onto a rock and push them off the mountain."

I shuddered and made a mental note not to offend the villagers even in the slightest way. We had now trekked high enough to see the village of Malana rising before us. A clump of houses grew visible through the mist in the distance.

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Malana women wearing their traditional costumes. Image source: corneredzone.com

Ahead of us, Kumar turned around and said solemnly "I would advise that you don't talk directly to the people. Nor should you ever touch them." "Alright, we won’t. But why not?" "It is condemned for them to make contact with outsiders. Any kind of outsiders." With this information, we hauled ourselves up the last stretch of the trek.

A young boy about 7 or 8 years old, peered at us between thickets of trees on our left. He let out a shrill whistle and darted swiftly towards the village. Soon, we spotted a few more. Like the first, they whistled and ran back into the village. "They are signaling that foreigners have arrived." Kumar explained. It was a strange moment, to be considered a foreigner in my own country.

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The village of Malana in the background. Image source: fountainink.in

The entire village of Malana could be covered by foot in less than an hour. The houses were built low, with shingled roofs and carved out wooden structures. The population was no more than 4500. Many of the structures we walked past were forbidden from being touched by outsiders like us. Kumar, true to his role as a guide, pointed out the significance of different buildings we crossed.

"That, there, is the school" he pointed to a square concrete structure with a yard lush with cannabis plants. "I wish I studied there", my friend joked. Children chased each other in the yard, indifferent to my stoner friends salivating over the marijuana. "That building is the temple where they worship" Kumar motioned at a grand wooden structure. "Which God do they worship? Is their religion a sect of Hinduism?" "No" replied Kumar. "They worship their own deity, Jamlu. He is only worshipped here in Malana and communicates with them through a chosen oracle." What fascinating information I thought to myself. Even in a land isolated from the rest of the country, and even without the influence of religious norms practised elsewhere, they had their own deity and religion. A fire in 2008 wiped out many structures in Malana, however Lord Jamlu’s temple still remains.

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A fire in 2008 wiped out many structures in Malana, however Lord Jamlu’s temple still remains. Image source: travelseewrite.com

It had started to rain heavily. Shivering through our wet sweaters and jackets, we took shelter under a small shack at the edge of the mountain. A tall, thin man with an unsmiling face approached Kumar. After a brief conversation, Kumar turned to us and said "He wanted to know who you are and what you want. I said you are here to visit. He wants to know if you would like to buy hash from him." We looked at each other uncertainly. "Uh. Sure. Uh, yes. Yes, please." The ganja man (I call him this because that is who he was to us; he gave us ganja and nothing more, not even his name) looked around shiftily as we completed the transaction. On the side, Kumar explained that not everyone in the village was allowed to sell hash to tourists and they could face trouble from the other villagers if they were caught. Perhaps this was to regulate the sale of Malana cream and ensure prices aren't decided by naive bargaining.

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It is not taboo for children to join in making hashish. Image source: fountainink.in

Although we were outsiders, ganja man still extended his hospitality towards us. Still unsmiling, he asked us (through Kumar) if we cared for some pakodas. With our muscles aching and our bellies rumbling, we nodded eagerly. There, amidst the mist and the mountains, we ravenously ate piping hot pakodas from a paper plate, served with a helping of what was, and still is, the most delicious chutney I have ever had. "This is incredible!" I gushed. "That chutney is made from the seeds and leaves of the cannabis plant," he told me.

While we ate, the ganja man took out a long OCB and casually rolled a joint with one hand, with an ease that most people only have while tying their shoelaces. With a flick of his tongue along the paper and another flick of a match, it was lit. It was hard to keep the wonder and awe off our faces as we stole glances at him, this wonderful, mysterious man who so lazily blew smoke rings into the still air. Half way through the joint, he passed it our way. Like the smoke, my thoughts swirled, branched out and broke away at their edges. I lost all concept of time. For what could have been eternity, I found myself at absolute peace, lost in the drifting clouds.

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The cannabis crop is the main source of income for the Malana people. Image source: moonpeak.files.wordpress.com

When the haze of the hash had passed, I walked around, observing the mountains of Malana. I came across a mountainside where all the plants were hacked down to the earth. The destruction lay ugly and in plain view. It was a heartbreaking sight. I asked Kumar and the ganja man about this. "Of course," said ganja man to Kumar with bitterness in his voice "Nobody knows anything about Malana except Malana hash! Governments have been fighting for the destruction of these crops as they see it destroying culture. Even the US government has asked us to stop production. They have offered to compensate for the money we will lose from profits."

Looking at history, the people of Malana used to legally cultivate and sell cannabis and its products until 1985, when heavy international pressure pushed the Indian government to pass the drug law. Under this law, marijuana became an illegal substance, the possession of which could result in an imprisonment sentence of more than 10 years. Even today in the valley, police wield machetes and execute orders to hack all the marijuana plants that are within their physical capability. All in order to dissuade the locals from cultivating the crop. However, the main profits and source of income for the village is the thriving cultivation of cannabis. The harsh weather and geological conditions make it difficult for the people of Malana to grow any other cash crop. Without this, they have little to turn to.

More signs of influence from the outside world showed up as we walked. Decades of exposure to tourists and external food supplies led to the sight of a long river of empty packets of Lays, Kurkure, Dark Magic, Coca Cola that lay crushed in the black slushy water of what once used to be a clear stream. I asked Kumar if this water also cures cancer. Kumar laughed. There was no effective way of disposing or recycling non-biodegradable materials. What we were seeing was years and years of accumulated rubbish, most of which was consumed not by tourists but by the youth of the village. As we walked, I noticed a mother yank her child away from our path. With continuous exposure to the fast life through tourists, children are enchanted by the perceived glamour of the outside world. It has become a struggle to pass on their rich culture to the younger generation. Whereas once only handloom was worn by all the people of Malana, today the youth of Malana can be spotted wearing jeans, much to the elder's chagrin.

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A river of junk. Image source: yespahari.in

The fame generated from the marvellous Malana cream is a double-edged sword. On one hand it creates the demand for hash that helps sustain the village when nothing else can. But on the other, it subjects them to relentless streams of tourists and hippies that clamour up their hills to claim their off beat experience. My initial gusto to write an inspirational travel piece had gone. In its place was a heavy sadness and shame. I abandoned all ideas to write the article I had planned. The less people feel like coming to this place, the better.

This July, Lord Jamlu spoke to the villagers of Malana through an oracle. Lord Jamlu it seems, was displeased by the corruption of the traditional way of Malana life and culture. By his decree, all villagers must shut down restaurants and guesthouses (which have increased exponentially over the last few years, most being leased to outsiders) lest they want to face Lord Jamlu's wrath. The villagers are in agreement and Malana is now declared off-limits to tourists.

While my trip to Malana was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience (well, more so now because of the ban), seeing how just a few visits could help corrupt a rich untouched culture made me regret the trip.

What most people don't realise (including myself when I visited Malana) is the effect of our presence in lands that were previously isolated. In Malana, it is the slow death of their culture in front of their eyes when they allow us in. It is the river of plastic that snakes behind their houses and grows larger and larger until one day the whole village may drown in it. It is the petrified mothers who cling to their children with their gaze averted upon sighting us. It is the reduction of their existence to merely our touristic experience.

Today, the people of Malana have collectively agreed they no longer want tourism to infiltrate their sacred culture. Yet even with this knowledge, you will still find sulking tourists, annoyed that Lord Jamlu has taken away their God-given right to take selfies with the villagers. #travellers #blessed

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Perhaps now, the people of Malana can cultivate their culture peacefully. Image source: fountainink.in

This clown-show is the reality of what tourism most often is. People rush to buy flight tickets and new clothes and bikinis, and in their excitement always forget to bring along sensitivity. Throngs of entitled people barge into new territories and pristine nature with their shiny new cameras and packets of chips trailing behind (in case you ever get lost, just follow the trail of crushed chips packets. It will take you back to where you belong).

Perhaps now the people of Malana can cultivate their culture peacefully without our intrusion. Perhaps now their culture will not be a trade off for their livelihood. There is no denying that we can learn a great deal by studying indigenous cultures and tribes, but it is imperative to ask ourselves - at what cost did we gain our experience? And who is paying the price?

Note to all the weeping stoners: While Lord Jamlu has forbidden guesthouses from continuing in Malana, there has been no ban on the villagers leaving the village to sell hash for their livelihood. So don't be too dejected. From the information gleaned, this does not seem to be the end of Malana cream for the rest of the world. Just the end of blatant tourism in Malana.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are independent views solely of the author(s) expressed in their private capacity and do not in any way represent or reflect the views of 101India.com

By Rebecca George Photographs by Rebecca George

[a-memoir-of-me-blog]

more system things lol. fuck. matrix is real

my first true love: boys will be boys and good thing I'm not in that convo cause I know I'm ok with no abortions and cause I'm so against that or funding for that

-Me: but like at least have condoms and birth control easy access. Because then the kids being born to underage parents and/or parents who cannot afford good care for them, they'll grow up in harsh environments because the parents simply cannot get out of the system. All their hard work goes straight to just caring for what they have now. And if they're in school, it's even harder. If they're at work. It's even harder. This has a huge toll on a child's behavior. And that's why inner city schools need to be better. They need to rlly be there and feel like a community for the kid and prepare them for their success because that's what they're lacking at home. And very important for counseling for them. Teaching them about interpersonal and personal skills and negotiating for not just their gain, but their counterpart. We should donate to these kids who can't afford much because of the situation their parents are in. Or else there's a rlly high risk for them to act out in criminal ways. Like selling sex, selling drugs, robberies, gang activity all just to provide for themselves and their family. And they're just going to be jailed. And who suffers? Tax payers. Their families. That's why we need to PREVENT this. But private funded prisons will want to keep it because they want to profit off of the people who simply are not aware. And again. School. Community. Etc. and that creates less STD’s and unwanted pregnancies etc. and that would help hone down those issues. The services wouldn't be used as much because of the programs installed to help prevent that. And yes...all those services, are tax payers! And yes! We are giving them the profits! So instead! Let's do stuff to PREVENT this!

-Him: condoms and birth control and education should be enforced and made easy access because then it prevents unwanted pregnancies and spread of diseases. And most of the time they do grow up in tough situations but education (resources) only do so much and guide, but it's up to the individual to take it and own it and their own responsibilities when it comes to taking the smart way and benefit from that or disregard all of that and go the “alternative” way that media flaunts. Both males and females gotta start being aware of themselves and how they affect things around them and also to stop fucking everything and be smarter about their shit.

-Me: so we should help the inner city/low income kids have better ways to resolve issues. create more businesses within those area for them to get money in a civil way and at least help stay afloat with their family and not have to resort in uncivil ways to get money, in means of getting things to survive. this can also help keep gang activity down too. help keep pimping and prostitution down (STD’s and pregnancy down). drug dealers down. drug use down. honestly it all starts from 1) birth 2) growing up with proper education and good behaviors enforced and community connection

like they need to realize they're in a bad situation and we're born into this but it's not their fault. BUT it's THEY. it is YOU who can provide something better for yourself and your future and your community and the uprising generations. they should realize and be empowered that they can get out of the position they were born into.

that's also where discrimination comes in (being stuck in one area and letting power go to one), and learn to make ppl like them instead of reacting bad when bad happens to them. they need to let ppl see that all they want is a better life for themselves and those around them and not let their hopes and dreams go down because they're the minority and/or the targeted ones and the low income ones. the low educated ones. etc. they need to not act out when they're not being heard and/or given chances. the first chance is the first and last. so always try to make it good. if we installed a rlly strong emphasis on how important education is, self control and proper behavior to not hurt another and not one another, and come together as a community to be taken seriously and be seen as ppl who are rlly just trying to get things to be better for themselves and the community and the future. doing illegal shit will just make a lot of people want to them against them because they doesn't help them nor anyone else around them. but they also don't wanna fix it because they wanna lock those ppl up. and that's private prisons. and obv then the remainder need to go to public prisons and that's so much tax money, which could've went to education to prevent that stuff from happening.

-him: nine of that will stop tho. the system has made it this way and to try to stabilize low income communities with businesses and store fronts 1) no one wants to open a store in a high risk area 2) no one wants to fund a company in that location that's bound to be vandalized

-me: that's where social media and pop culture and selfishness comes into play. priorities are fucked up. they all wanna seem cool and above one another. like yo. you're in section 8. but u wanna stack on j’s? that won't mean shit when you're older? no one will care when you're older about what you had. you're gonna waste on drugs and kill your body slowly? you wanna “flex” and feel better than each other? tryna be like fake ass rappers who give off a fake make believe reality? and you're brainwashed into it? like….stop being brainwashed into thinking that's cool

And yeah, but that's where I think education needs to reform. I am all for education bruh. All for communities coming together to realize their internal issues and going to the root. All for changing their priorities. All for coming together for a better come up for all these shit areas. But yo. Education!!!!!! Like really man. Education. Being aware of the system so it doesn't chew them up and shit them out even worse But. I think if we open businesses there and let them realize. This is for the betterment of the WHOLE community. This isn't just for a profit. This is to offer u more jobs. Offer u a responsibility and a sense of importance. Because let's be honest. All these ppl just want to feel like they're doing something to get attention. And why would they wanna vandalize their own shit that's gonna help them? U know? Like. I think they should learn some ways to build more businesses. Businesses not just for themselves. But for their whole community and for their brothers and sisters all struggling. Like. They also need to stop being selfish and killing other ppl out of like idk. Jealousy? Wanting more money? But they're the ones making it hard for everyone in their community struggle. Ppl who are drug dealers or gang bangers always end up staying in their shit beginnings because as a WHOLE, they're making it harder for themselves. I guess u can say those ppl are the bad 1% of the low incomers lol. They create holes. Make other holes even bigger And how can this be avoided??? Education!!!!!!! Like. It sucks to say. But rn, there's like separate economies (high, middle, low). And they're all equally corrupt and that's why they all can't work well together rn and we're all like burdens to one another lol. But u know what helps ALL of them? Education and better Also. We should have more programs for kids. Let them socialize with kids their age. Have people to look up to as a good role model. Help them with any personal issues. Therefore they won't act out because they know there's help for them. Also it can be good because we can let their parents work while we watch their kids and help them with hw, do arts and crafts, socialize with friends, maybe play instruments, just dance. Be themselves. Let loose. :) "Hendren, along with Harvard economists Katz and Raj Chetty, now at Stanford University, looked at the lasting effects of moving children to better neighborhoods as part of Moving to Opportunity, a short-lived federal housing program from the '90s. Their analysis, published in May, found that the longer children are exposed to better environments, the better they do economically in the future. Whichever city or state children grow up in also radically affects whether they'll move out of poverty, he said"* And what did I say? Trying to improve inner city / low income neighborhoods? Like. They can improve it by themselves if they wanted to. If they're wise enough and more woke. "It's definitely been a strategy" to justify starving government of resources, which in turn weakens it and makes it less attractive as a tool to accomplish big things, said Skocpol. "In an everybody-for-themselves situation, it is the better-educated and the wealthy who can protect themselves."* And that's why we can't rely on the government. We must make the changes ourselves. We must educate ourselves. Educate our communities. Help the children. "I think it is naïve of most individuals to think that for everything there is something that government can legislate and regulate and impose that makes life better for everybody," she said. "That's just not the case."* While it's clear that investing in children and their education pays lifelong dividends for them, those gains take 20 years to be realized, said Katz. That's why it's critical that their parents get help and live in less vulnerable situations.* Of course industry needs to run its businesses productively and profitably, but it can do so without harming "the commons," Rivkin said. "Business has been very effective at pursuing its narrow self-interest in looking for special tax breaks. I think that kind of behavior just needs to stop." Drawing on an idea from Harvard Business School finance Professor Mihir Desai, Rivkin suggests that businesses treat their tax responsibilities as a compliance function rather than as a profit center. That money could then go back into investment in "the commons," where "lots of common ground" exists among business, labor, policymakers, educators and others.* "The businesses should be working with the local community college to train the workers whom they would love to hire; the university should be getting together with policymakers to figure out how to get innovations out of the research lab into startups faster; business should work with educators to reinvent the school system," said Rivkin.* Putnam suggests more widespread mentoring of low-income children who lack the social safety net that upper- and middle-class children enjoy, a topic he explored in "Our Kids."* Adam Smith, perhaps the first true economist, gave some answers in “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.” That treatise is sometimes thought of as a capitalist bible. It is at least partly about the achieving of greatness through the pursuit of wealth in free markets. But Smith didn’t believe that money alone assured national stature. He also wrote disapprovingly of the single-minded impulse to secure wealth, saying it was “the most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Instead, he emphasized that decent people should seek real achievement — “not only praise, but praiseworthiness.”** Strikingly, national greatness was a central issue in a previous presidential election campaign: Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1964, called for the creation of a Great Society, not merely a rich society or a powerful society. Instead, he spoke of achieving equal opportunity and fulfillment. “The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents,” he said. “It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness.”** All of which is to say that government intervention to enhance greatness will not be a simple matter. There is a risk that well-meaning change may make matters worse. Protectionist policies and penalties for exporters of jobs may not increase long-term opportunities for Americans who have been left behind. Large-scale reduction of environmental or social regulations or in health care benefits, or in America’s involvement in the wider world may increase our consumption, yet leave all of us with a sense of deeper loss. Greatness reflects not only prosperity, but it is also linked with an atmosphere, a social environment that makes life meaningful. In President Johnson’s words, greatness requires meeting not just “the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”** The solution to this puzzle is to realize that economic inequality is not just one thing. It consists of some things that are very bad, like kids with no chance of reaching their potential, and others that are good, like Larry Page and Sergey Brin starting the company you use to find things online.*** And while some of the growth in economic inequality we've seen since then has been due to bad behavior of various kinds, there has simultaneously been a huge increase in individuals' ability to create wealth*** (refer back to my English essay about the bad 1% of the 1%. The stealers. The manipulators. Compared to the other .99% of the 1% who actually create stuff, and therefore create wealth in return for their creation) There are lots of things wrong with the US that have economic inequality as a symptom. We should fix those things. In the process we may decrease economic inequality. But we can't start from the symptom and hope to fix the underlying causes. [7]*** Closely related to poverty is lack of social mobility. I've seen this myself: you don't have to grow up rich or even upper middle class to get rich as a startup founder, but few successful founders grew up desperately poor. But again, the problem here is not simply economic inequality. There is an enormous difference in wealth between the household Larry Page grew up in and that of a successful startup founder, but that didn't prevent him from joining their ranks. It's not economic inequality per se that's blocking social mobility, but some specific combination of things that go wrong when kids grow up sufficiently poor.*** One of the most important principles in Silicon Valley is that "you make what you measure." It means that if you pick some number to focus on, it will tend to improve, but that you have to choose the right number, because only the one you choose will improve; another that seems conceptually adjacent might not. For example, if you're a university president and you decide to focus on graduation rates, then you'll improve graduation rates. But only graduation rates, not how much students learn. Students could learn less, if to improve graduation rates you made classes easier. Economic inequality is sufficiently far from identical with the various problems that have it as a symptom that we'll probably only hit whichever of the two we aim at. If we aim at economic inequality, we won't fix these problems. So I say let's aim at the problems.*** If we want to fix the world behind the statistics, we have to understand it, and focus our efforts where they'll do the most good.*** Rather, the focus should be on disrupting the cycle of poverty in which social decay in one generation inhibits the development of the next, individuals ill-prepared for life and work face limited opportunity, and their ensuing struggles cause further social decay.**** Better-educated parents place far more emphasis on encouragement and on the value of self-reliance, while less educated ones more frequently deliver discouragement and emphasize obedience.**** Children in the lower class face stresses and traumas that impair learning and the development of concentration, self-discipline, and problem-solving.**** Putnam explains that children in the lower class face stresses and traumas foreign to the upper class. They are up to five times more likely to face abuse and violence, addiction, and the death or imprisonment of a parent. Those experiences, along with ineffective and unstable caregiving, impair learning and the development of “executive functions” such as concentration, self-discipline, and problem-solving. All these consequences occur independently of public schooling and, largely, before public schooling has even begun**** These problems in turn perpetuate the cycle by diminishing opportunity and career prospects. Between 1960 and 2010, Murray reports, the percentage of upper-class households with a full-time worker declined from 90 percent to 87 percent, while the lower-class decline was from 81 percent to 53 percent. And so, as the next generation starts its own families in its own communities, one can only hope the lower class will manage to hold the eroding ground on which their parents stood. The trends, unfortunately, suggest they have little chance even of that; as the cycle spirals downward and decay engenders yet more decay.**** But elements in Edwards’s upbringing that might have mitigated his economic hardship — a two-parent family instilling strong values, a community filled with hard-working role models committed to the betterment of their children — are exactly what have now gone missing in lower-class America. Social inequality is insidious because it transmits itself across generations by interfering with opportunity.**** Can we conclude that social conditions in the lower class unfairly impair opportunity? If we do, it should affect what outcomes we consider just and what level of government intervention we demand. But the situation is not only a fundamental challenge to some conservative assumptions; it also reinforces conservatives’ emphasis on family and community and traditional values as social bedrocks that a government program or check can never replace. Conservatives are uniquely capable of understanding the problem and should lead the way toward solutions.**** For better and worse, you can’t legislate social change. Social programs — especially if delivered through local organizations — can provide real help to individuals. But programs alone cannot counter the momentum of a free society barreling in the opposite direction. Instead, broader public policy must seek to alter the basic incentives and conditions fueling the negative trends.**** *https://www.google.com/amp/www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-02-09/the-costs-of-inequality-the-rich-and-the-rest%3Fcontext%3Damp* **https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/upshot/make-america-great-again-isnt-just-about-money-and-power.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FIncome%20Inequality&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=collection&_r=0&referer= ***http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html ****https://www.google.com/amp/s/bc.marfeel.com/amp/www.nationalreview.com/article/425746/social-inequality-matters-much-or-more-economic-inequality-oren-cass?client=safari https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=RIghbrn5yfI http://www.scilearn.com/blog/ten-facts-about-how-poverty-impacts-education https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/17/public-educations-biggest-problem-keeps-getting-worse/?utm_term=.d4f232debd33 https://www.google.com/amp/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2016/7/22/12254046/myths-higher-education-crisis-debt-loans-free-tuition This ties into my weed ideas!!!!!

[itcanbepossible-blog]

Trove Mount Codes

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[bbnnfeed-blog]

Navigating The Topsy-Turvy, High Stakes World of ICOs: Is There A Platform For That?

New Post has been published on https://bbnn.io/2018/06/navigating-topsy-turvy-high-stakes-world-icos-platform/

Navigating The Topsy-Turvy, High Stakes World of ICOs: Is There A Platform For That?

The global ICO market’s rapid emergence has been well documented. Percolating along at a frenzied pace for months, this space is now flush with scores of projects vying for attention and investment interest.

Amid this trend, the prevalence of scams and pump-and-dump schemes has escalated, creating uncertainty among many potential investors. A recent  Wall Street Journal investigation, in fact, discovered that nearly 20 percent of 1,450 projects were clearly frauds. This has led to increased attention on the part of regulatory bodies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in terms of the monitoring of these unregistered “utility tokens.” 

In addition, the move on the part of Facebook, Twitter, and Google to ban crypto related ads, has created a chilling effect on crypto projects and the promotion of these campaigns. Meanwhile, there has been a pronounced drop in prices on cryptocurrency markets leaving many investors skeptical and with fewer resources to put toward ICO investments.

The great innovation that ICOs brought to the table was their ability to remove a great deal of the friction associated with startup fundraising. But now with regulatory constraints, questionable projects, and a crowded ICO market, it’s becoming increasingly challenging for the average investor, even experienced ones, to make informed decisions about various ICO/STO opportunities.

Mike Finch

We here at BBNN recently interviewed Mike Finch, co-founder, and COO of ICO Alert, a trusted platform of active and upcoming Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Security Token Offerings (STOs) for his views on this rapidly emerging space. ICO Alert arguably has the most comprehensive list of Pre-ICOs (also referred to as pre-sales) and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). It has published hundreds of in-depth ICO Alert reports, delivering insight into past, active, and upcoming ICOs. It also maintains a highly popular Alert Podcast, which features exclusive interviews with the largest founders and thought leaders in the blockchain space. Here are a few of Finch’s thoughts from the interview: 

Take us back to mid-June and the SEC announcements that neither bitcoin and ether are not considered securities. What are your thoughts about these developments and what sort of impact will they have on token sales?  

MF: Yes. In many ways, it was a good day for the crypto-sphere. Essentially, Ether was determined not to be a security by the SEC. And there was a handful of other informal guidance by a gentleman at the Yahoo finance summit as well.  Lots of great news all around.

But I don’t recall that it specifically determined one way or another whether or not ERC20 tokens will be considered securities.

MF: No doubt, there are still some missing pieces from what I’ve been told and heard. Either way, it is good news as we, hopefully, move towards further regulatory guidance at a minimum. Obviously, some of these guidelines that were presented are not formal. They are not written into law. But it does give folks more information on how they should be conducting a token sale.

In other words, those in the ICO space should not see this as definitive?

MF: No. Clarity seems to be happening in baby steps. We will take it when we can get it. I hope it comes sooner rather than later.

So talk to us about ICO Alert and its value proposition for users?

MF: Absolutely, let me give you a brief history. ICO Alert was originally designed by my brother and me just for us, never as a website [or business] for anyone else. But we very quickly discovered a need in the ICO and cryptocurrency industry. Prior to us launching, it was very difficult for the average person to figure out which ICOs were raising money. ICO Alert came along as a comprehensive resource for the different token sales that are out there. We list ICOs, STOs, and Airdrops on our platform. We’re completely independent, which allows us to be comprehensive.

Describe the scope of your information gathering efforts?

MF: We’ve listed nearly 4,000 ICOs since the business launched on April 1, 2017. So if you look at Investing.com or your ICO Bench, or whatever the case, you’ll see that they do not have nearly as many token sales as we do. We don’t tell people what to invest in. Rather we give them the information they need to go through and use their own metrics to make their own decisions.

Describe the typical user of your site?

MF: Our typical user is one who has only been in the ICO space only for a couple of months or maybe weeks. A big problem we have in the space is ratings. A lot of sites have a lot of traffic and are giving out ratings that are completely subjective or, much worse, are paid for. What you have are a lot of new users searching for information [and] metrics, trying to make their own decisions. The problem is that the data they’re receiving is inaccurate, incomplete, or simply biased for some financial incentive.

How can this be changed?

MF: What I think it’s going to take like any other new asset, is education. In other words, the user needs to take the time to educate themselves. Cryptocurrency has been and continues to be considered a get rich quick scheme, one where you can spend a couple of days on it and immediately make a ton of money. In reality, that’s not the case. There are tons and tons of layers to understanding how to invest in cryptocurrency and where the value is. And the same case exists for ICOs. I think we’re coming to a realization in the ICO space that this isn’t as simple as throwing your money at these projects and then selling the token at a higher price anymore.

Reports continue to circulate in the media world about crypto heists and all of those ugly sorts of things that hurt the integrity of the space. How pervasive is this from your vantage point?

MF: That’s certainly a big question with many layers, one that’s not easy to answer. I think the majority of the time users are not falling victim to scams or having their cryptocurrency stolen. But reading about this in the media time and time again can make you feel like that might be the case. Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party solutions coming out to address these concerns.

Like?

MF: Hardware wallets are a big one. These projects continue to expand their offerings so that you don’t have to store your cryptocurrency on any exchange. Exchanges getting hacked, I would guess, are the most common way people are losing their cryptocurrency. Having a hardware wallet and understanding how it functions, how to communicate with it, how to store your various tokens on that wallet is a great first step.

In general, what are some cautionary tales in terms of what the average everyday person should be mindful of in terms of investing in an ICO?

MF: For example, there are a handful of things that we are doing at ICO Alert to make sure we are not listing scams. We want to make sure that these projects are holding themselves accountable and not doing something that is detrimental to a user. But more directly to your questions, newbies who are seeking to get into the ICO space certainly should start with things like Satoshi’s (bitcoin founder’s) white paper and basic information on how to store cryptocurrency on a hardware wallet. Then there are some big barriers to entry in the ICO space that, as ICO alert continues to grow, we hope to address. The biggest one is that [to] contribute to most ICOs you have to use bitcoin or ethereum, or even NEO. Communicating with an ICO via a smart contract can be very complicated. Understanding that process, finding those resources that are going to help with understanding that process, is going to be key before one actually look into which projects they want to invest in.

Talk with us about the regulatory environment. What are your opinions on that? Do you think it’s a good thing? Or will it create enormous barriers for the ICO space?

MF: That’s a great question [and] one that we constantly debate in the office. Honestly, this is probably the biggest barrier right now in terms of the continued growth of cryptocurrencies or ICOs. There are certainly some pros that regulation could bring, while at the same time really creating some unnecessary barriers to the space.

Can you elaborate on this a bit?

MF: Sure. If you look at ICOs for example, their main draw is that now anyone can fund a startup, whether you have ten dollars in Africa or a million dollars in New York City: you [can] fund one. You don’t need to be an accredited investor. You can do it online, you can, supposedly, access all the information you need to make that decision. But if now, at least in the United States, ICOs are illegal; you have these barriers that don’t allow a large portion of the investing world to contribute to what should be a decentralized, low barrier to entry investment vehicle.

So how do you think all of this will eventually shake out?

MF: It will be interesting for sure. Hopefully, we find some solution that is halfway, one where some compromises are made. But right now a bigger issue is easing some of the concerns among those out there who are seeking to raise money for their entrepreneurial project. It’s important for them to have a mechanism like ICOs for funding their startups or ideas. Otherwise, the United States and other countries are going to fall behind when it comes to innovation.

What are you looking to contribute to this quest at ICO Alert?

Our largest goal for 2018 is to collect anywhere from 150 to 200 data points on every single ICO, STO, and Airdrop that has ever existed. We’re not filtering our list by those who pay us. Nor are we filtering the list by some sort of subjective rating. We aren’t doing top 50, top 100, anything like that. We simply intend to collect information—we’ll be done relatively soon—for every single ICO that has ever existed so that we can be able to share this data with the average, everyday person. We’ll also be sharing it with institutional players: hedge funds and more traditional financial bodies who need this data. We believe we can present this information in really unique ways to our users so that as they continue to learn about which projects they think will be most successful. We’re super excited about unveiling these new projects this year and towards the beginning of next year.

Finally, what do you think is on the horizon for the remainder of 2018 in terms of ICOs and STOs?

MF: Another great question. Well, I am far from a fortune teller. But I do think that a lot of what occurs the remainder of this year is going to have to do with regulation. In particular, there is an opportunity for security tokens to take off this year if the regulatory uncertainty continues. I think there is an important context to consider in terms of why security tokens have a much longer road to travel than ICOs did. Custody is a big one. The ease of use or launch between  STOs and ICOs are completely different.

Tell us more here?

MF: For a crypto asset like an ICO to have grown from where there were under 100 in 2016 up to nearly 2,000 in 2017 — that didn’t come simply because people were investing in them. A lot of that had to do with the fact that anyone could launch and ICO given that its a brand new crypto asset that’s unregulated and uses a decentralized token model to raise funds.

STOs don’t benefit from that same thing, and they have a lot of big questions that still need to be answered. Custody, as I said earlier, is a huge one. I am not convinced that STOs will be able to move quickly enough to take advantage of the current landscape. I think they will likely exist in the future but will act more as a tokenized version of the current securities out there.

And?

MF: I think there is plenty of room for both ICOs and STOs. We list both on our site, so we are neutral. I just think STOs will exist more for those securities that already exist [and]  for those larger companies that are trying to cut costs in various ways. ICOs will continue to exist for the much smaller startup—the company trying to raise three, five, ten, twenty million versus massive 100 million dollar rounds like you’ve seen with Telegram and others. It certainly will be interesting to see how all of this eventually shakes out.

Michael Scott is Editor-In-Chief of Blockchain Business News Network