Hey all,

I know I've been absent for a while, but I haven't forgotten about you all or this place. Life has been nuts. Between splitting with my longtime partner and starting my own business, I haven't had as much Nexus time as I'd like, but I'm hoping to re-engage in the coming months.

In the hopes of kicking off some of that re-engagement, here's my talk from the OmTerra conference in late April 2018. Hope you enjoy it, and if not, hope we can have a fun debate about it.





Sorry in advance for the less than stellar audio. I didn't know they weren't recording, so I just grabbed my phone last minute to record.

Good stuff man

Don't have much to say because I haven't watched much of it yet, but definitely will.

It's been beaten to a dead horse but it's really great that you've represented this place to a degree (same goes for endlessness and baco, etc) by doing these talks.

Great stuff bruda

You're right, the sound quality is terrible!

Have you considered re-recording the audio separately? And inserting the slides into a window in one corner/a side pane of the video? It's a very engaging talk but I've only managed to watch 15 minutes of it, in large part due to these issues.

Sounds like you're pretty busy though, Snozz. If I had a copy of the presentation media I'd re-record it myself, although of course the accent would be off.

This topic is very important to me, if it were possible for me to help in any way to assist in its effective communication I would be only too pleased to do so.

Thanks for sharing Snozz. I watched the whole thing and the only audio I struggled with was the questions from the audience, your voice was clear.

The content is interesting. I want to bring up two main things:

1) Justification of Psychedelic Drug Laws

Today it is clear (as you said) that the original scheduling motivation was false. Yet, the laws based on false premises remain. Why? I think there is more than one reason:

- 1a because people want to control others and keep their power structure through laws (your thesis)
- 1b because there are people who still truly believe that the drugs are damaging enough to suspend freedoms and incarcerate citizens.

You made a great eloquent point for 1a. However, I think you underestimate the ongoing effect of 1b. For example, police sometimes proudly announce they have removed a dangerous plant from the street. More enlightened police are starting to ignore marijuana even though a lot of unjustifiable laws still exist. I think this is the point that some in the audience where trying to make: some drug war enforcers think they are doing the right thing and do have a choice, they just make a mistake sometimes.

I think we should still bring up the medical information to help with issue 1b, while at the same time working on 1a. Can we not do this synergistically, without one taking anything away from the other?

2) The people on the other side of the war that change sides through felt life experience

There is a very important class of people that can help affect change. The people that used to be in 1b (or even 1a), but that because of the reality of life (typically a medical issue) had to abandon that position. For example, the Florida judge who jailed many and ended up advocating for medicinal marijuana access with deep remorse over his past career. Ronald Reagan can be seen as a victim of his own war and drugs since his end of life Alzheimer's could have been helped by marijuana.

We all have a day when the truth catches up to us. I think that we should embrace these people, forgive all their sins instantly and welcome them to our team. I think consciously doing this could be very beneficial and have a snowball effect (some of these folks may be concerned about how they will be received, at risk of deciding to stay on the sidelines). We should welcome them; I think doing so is in our best interest.

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Finally, I think science alone is not going to change our oppressive laws, and that became apparent many peer reviewed journal papers ago. A wise man once said that history shows no one gives you rights: you have to go grab them. On this last part I think we agree.

I hear you and I'm torn between available time and a desire to have better quality. When you suggest re-recording it, the main issue is that I don't have a text for this talk. I don't even have notes. With how nuts life has been, I've been trying to just get clear on my points to myself and then just follow my slides. So the amount of time it would take to do that (and make a more professional vid with integrated slides) seems rather daunting to me. That said I'm open to thoughts/suggestions.

If there's a way to clean up the original audio, I'd certainly be interested in that as a maybe quicker alternative. The original file was very quiet, and amplifying it helped tremendously, but also introduced a ton of audio artifacts. I'm absolutely open to suggestions/help in cleaning it up

I have not used Audacity myself but a lot of people use this for cleaning audio and correcting levels with lots of youtube tutorials to help you.

https://www.audacityteam.org/ this is the official site, plus its free so that's a bonus.

It might be worth a look if you ever get time/feel particularly inspired to do it.

I'm more than willing to put in the time to do this, I'll see about downloading the video and either clean up the audio or provide subtitles. Or receiving a copy of the video file itself would be super helpful.

I fully get that you're far too busy to be worrying about sorting out the audio yourself right now, Snozz.

There is a closed caption button at the bottom of the video that seems to be mostly correct. If memory serves, there are easy methods for downloading the transcript of the video, which you could use for future reference, online posting, re-recording, etc.

Also, thanks for the video!

thanx for sharing.
you da man snozz, keep up the good work.