Life

[Frenetic Pony]

I have some experience in my vicinity with weed being consumed by making tea out of it. The reasoning is that smoking creates a lot of fumes and hindrance for other people [in the house], brownies are uneven (you can get a single chunk with all the stuff in it), whereas tea is nicely and evenly distributed to maximize the effect. The downside is that the tea isn't exactly delicious. So the question is; are you in it for the [medical] effect of calming nerves or taking your mind off of pain, or do you want to enjoy the experience itself? Just some thoughts.

 

So how is this made? Apparently pot isn't water soluable, and I've never heard of it made that way. I've lived in the pot capital of the US. It's not in Colorado, it's a town called Arcata in California. Pot is basically legal there despite not being "legal" in the state. But people smoke it in public all the time, even the cops. Going to college there involved the orientation specifically telling all the new students that you couldn't smoke it on campus because the campus was partially funded by the feds. There's even a holiday (April 20th) essentially dedicated to smoking pot in public. Yet never in all that time did I hear of it as tea.

 

How would you go about making such? I've never even tried pot (my drug, caffeine, is perfectly legal) but I'm interested anyway. The people I know in the coffee shop I'm in just suggested things like milk or etc. for dissolving it as such. Anyone know for sure?

[Lu]

I've never heard about tea, but cannabutter is relatively easy to make and ideal for binding THC to it. If you do a good job mixing that through whatever you're baking, you'll get a pretty consistent edible. The problem with any edibles is that it takes about an hour for it to hit, which makes it hard to determine the concentration and the amount one would need to eat to. Unless you can get those nice pre-made space cakes, I think having a friend you feel comfortable around to introduce you and help you smoke some would be easier. Just don't do that gross Dutch thing of combining it with tobacco, because that shit is really gross and it makes smoking way more difficult, especially for beginners.

[tegan]

I dunno' what's wrong with me, but my head aches and I'm throwing up and stuff. Maybe from the new medication or maybe just from all the exertion lately. I get scared when I'm sick, though. It's one of the few times when I miss my mom.

[Roderick]

Take it easy, then. It'll be fine.

 

Frenetic, the way I've seen it is to first boil the cannabis for a good hour, then mix it with milk to produce tea and bind the whole thing together. Again, I'm pretty sure it's not exactly delicious, but it's an effective way to gain the effects of weed without smoking it.

[osmosisch]

Today I had a great taste of what it is to record a gaming podcast. To, ahem, celebrate the passing of the Dutch magazine [N]Gamer I wrote in for a good eight years now, we recorded a live podcast in front of a crowd of readers. It was so great. Turned out pretty long, a good 2,5 hours of material I think, but it was so much fun. You can imagine that after all those years, the staff has a pretty good rapport, so we hit it off with reminiscing about the magazine and looking into the future of Nintendo and gaming in general. I staunchly defended PC gaming, which was derided pretty much instantly. There's yet a long way to go, my brethren.

That sounds cool. I never took Dutch gaming magazines seriously ever since trying to get through a Power Unlimited.

 

The console part is just weird to me. None of my friends (except one who very kindly let me play throught Demon's Souls on his PS3) uses consoles for games except very occasionally to do party stuff with friends on the Wii.

[Roderick]

I think it really is a matter what you happen to be introduced to. Consoles and PC are both viable platforms for gaming, and it makes little sense to think poorly of either one. They have their unique charm. I'm almost sure that derision comes from a place of ignorance, where people just can't imagine playing on either a console or a PC.

[osmosisch]

In my case it's neither, I just don't like closed platforms that don't offer anything in compensation. So the DS has portability and battery life, making it worth it, whereas TV-based consoles offer me nothing over my PC.

[Roderick]

Oh, I didn't mean you! You're obviously not talking smack about console gaming, you just have no interest in it. That's very different.

 

Also, the Power Unlimited is hardly the high standard of VG journalism here... fortunately. It has a huge following though. [N]Gamer was much smaller, but managed to eke out 10 years of existence, which is no small feat.

[osmosisch]

It's sad to see it go under just at the moment when Dutch game development seems to bemore influential/booming than ever (vlambeer, triumph, ronimo. abbey games).

[Roderick]

True, but none of those are really Nintendo-centric. For the industry inside there's already Control magazine that caters to the professionals. Further than that, I doubt magazines have a big future. The decline has set in, that's undeniable. The internet is filling that gap, but there's a long way to go before that manages to offer a decent pay for quality writing (in most cases). It's strangely fitting that [N]Gamer should perish at the time when Nintendo itself is struggling to get attention for the Wii U. Though the 3DS has proven itself artistically and commercially.

[osmosisch]

Oh that's where the N came from? Haha, I should have checked I guess, sorry.

 

Anyway, I'm kind of holding out for something like Polygon to come out for the Dutch market, but I guess it's too small to sustain that kind of quality. Gaming is global anyway these days.

[Roderick]

The big Dutch gaming sites are gamer.nl, insidegamer.nl and maybe tweakers.net? Powerunlimited.nl? All of those are more along the lines of an IGN. Oh, I forgot that recently a Dutch version of IGN launched, but it's quite bad. Something like Polygon WOULD be amazing, but I doubt it'd be sustainable. Control could be an appropriate platform, but rarely does long-form or too in-depth.

[subbes]

It's not in Colorado, it's a town called Arcata in California.

 

Oh shit, you were in Arcata?  I used to read the Arcata Eye crime column for a while, it was really funny.

 

Re:  THC - I believe it's fat-soluble, hence canabutter.  I don't think you could manage to capture the active ingredients in either a tincture or a tea, so I'm confused also.

 

Jeez, listen to me talking like I know what I'm on about.  I've only smoked it four times, and never a whole marijuana!

[miffy495]

My step-dad has a prescription to deal with a degenerative muscle thing in his leg. It means that my whole family is pretty cool about the whole thing. It being something that we do together as a family (sitting around and Christmas sharing a pipe) has kind of killed the whole rebellious vibe for me. This also means that I only join in every six months or so, but tend to choose a good time when I do. It's always funny to me to see other people's reactions to my family's attitude towards it. They always seem to assume that the relaxed attitude means I must do a tonne, but it's kind of the opposite. In fact, in the last year, I can only recall one occasion where I've done so and wasn't with an over-50 family member.

 

 

EDIT: removed explicit references because teaching applications.

[Zeusthecat]

It means that my whole family is pretty cool about the whole thing. It being something that we do together as a family (sitting around and Christmas sharing a pipe) has kind of killed the whole rebellious vibe of drugs for me.

 

This is amazing. It is weird that it is so common for a family to get together and have alcoholic beverages but doing what your family does is almost unheard of, aside from the whole "illegal" thingy. I imagine you have some pretty great and interesting conversations during these get-togethers.

 

I have smoked with my dad a few times and that was pretty cool. He's a pretty quiet dude so it's a rare opportunity to actually hear him drop some knowledge and talk to him on a somewhat deeper level, something that I would never see otherwise.

 

My mom is addicted to a number of prescription painkillers so I've been working on trying to convince her to go for a medical card since we have that here now. I think she's pretty close to coming around. She doesn't 100% know that I smoke yet (although she probably has an idea) but I'm betting that if I told her about it now she would probably want to partake with me. Our relationship has been pretty rocky in the past so I think she would see it as a way to bond with her son.

 

As far as the rest of the family goes, man, I can only dream. There is quite a lot of drama and hostility in my family and the thought of everyone being all chilled out and just laughing and having trivial conversation without any bullshit is very enticing.

[osmosisch]

It used to be pretty normal for my parent's subset (ie. Dutch flower power parents) to sit around smoking the special cigs but a lot of them grew out of it before their kids hit the teens.

[tegan]

I was able to buy a full cart of groceries for the first time in forever today. I maybe went overboard and splurged a little, but oh man real food so good omph nomph nomph omph nomph

[Gormongous]

I was able to buy a full cart of groceries for the first time in forever today. I maybe went overboard and splurged a little, but oh man real food so good omph nomph nomph omph nomph

 

Tegan, watching your saga of poverty reminds me of my first year of grad school, when I wasn't funded and had miscalculated my loans so that I had to live on $500 a month, including rent. I drank a lot of water, which manages hunger great but makes you into a miserable pile of shit in the long run. You're certainly faring better than me.

 

And yeah, after living on nothing, any paycheck is cartoonish luxury. I can buy a whole tub of tapioca and eat it in one sitting!

[Roderick]

The Nintendo podcast I recorded last Sunday (in Dutch) is online! It's split up in various parts, I can be heard discussing the future of Nintendo in the second round (under my real name, Roderick).

 

http://www.ngamer.nl/ngamer-afscheidspodcast.html'>http://www.ngamer.nl/ngamer-afscheidspodcast.html

 

So, this is for all the Dutchmen here!

[toblix]

I ordered one of those remote-controlled helicopters with four propellers, and now I'm sitting all day hitting F5 to see it inch its way towards me. My prediction is I'll have it tomorrow, at which I probably have a very limited amount of time to play around with it before it hits a thing and breaks.

[dibs]

Pix plz

[toblix]

[osmosisch]

God I unironically love it when people are obstructive like that. Good job toblix!

[dibs]

Update plz

[Ben X]

I ordered one of those remote-controlled helicopters with four propellers, and now I'm sitting all day hitting F5 to see it inch its way towards me. My prediction is I'll have it tomorrow, at which I probably have a very limited amount of time to play around with it before it hits a thing and breaks.

 

My stepdad has a four-propellered aerial drone with a mounted camera, that you can control from your tablet just like a video game, it's ace.