Mostly called it. Got to the same place as Shift but via a different route. I assumed it was Troy on shift previously when it wasn't.
In Shift, the precipitating event from Victor was done by Thurman Jr, after discovering the REDACTED.
And I thought that would take the pez dispenser to do what we saw in the last seconds.
S4 is obviously gonna depart a bit from Dust, but it feels like a lot of the changes worked really well for TV. Shift the book works because you can't see Troy's face so cutting between Silo 1 and the 21st century works, even though it gets obvious really quickly.
"Forward vault". OK, I suspect I know what's going on there but I don't know why they made that change because it gave Engineering a reason to exist in the books. Maybe they figured having the drill in situ like that would make better telly. I dunno.
Genuinely cannot wait for S4. I like how they made the antagonist a trillionaire Musk-type because I am going to enjoy watching him get what's coming. It also fits with the zei
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So, Silo! What a ride that season was.
Mostly called it. Got to the same place as Shift but via a different route. I assumed it was Troy on shift previously when it wasn't.
In Shift, the precipitating event from Victor was done by Thurman Jr, after discovering the REDACTED.
And I thought that would take the pez dispenser to do what we saw in the last seconds.
S4 is obviously gonna depart a bit from Dust, but it feels like a lot of the changes worked really well for TV. Shift the book works because you can't see Troy's face so cutting between Silo 1 and the 21st century works, even though it gets obvious really quickly.
"Forward vault". OK, I suspect I know what's going on there but I don't know why they made that change because it gave Engineering a reason to exist in the books. Maybe they figured having the drill in situ like that would make better telly. I dunno.
Genuinely cannot wait for S4. I like how they made the antagonist a trillionaire Musk-type because I am going to enjoy watching him get what's coming. It also fits with the zeitgeist nicely. The entire World Order Operation Fifty (W.O.O.L. - geddit?) scheme is the sort of utterly insane shit these oligarch pricks would come up with.
Oh. I like how nobody is asking the obvious question.
About Bernard.
I expect they’ll get to that.
They changed the Silo 17 thing around a bit. I get why. In the books you were kinda left to work out the precise details of what actually happened out there right at the start. It was very heavily implied but never spelled out.
And I saw some people who read it and then completely missed the central point of WHY they were down there.
I suspect they’re gonna lay it on a bit more thickly here. Perhaps Troy will do some helpful exposition?
Assuming he works it out for himself. I assume he knows how the people sent out to clean die. No reason he wouldn’t.
Also I LOVE how much fan service/lamp shading there was in that ep;
“We could use a drone pilot” - TOO SOON
“Why would they need to kill a silo?”
The lift. Jesus Christ. If silo 1 found out about that … instant safeguard.
Bullet hole in very dangerous outside air mysteriously doesn’t kill when poor seals in the cleaning suits do.
I preferred the digger subplot in the book tho. The rationale worked much better.
Perfect end of season reveal would be switching to the “the voice”’s point of view as he utters those three words that he said to Lukas Kyle in the second book.
This similarity is a bit deceptive, though.The second ring significantly affects the molecule's metabolism, and MPH's effect is genuinely different from the effects of all the things that are or decompose to plain old dextroamphetamine.
There's a genuine trend of Big Pharma putting the Grouch'os mask onto amphetamine, hyping the result up as a next big thing that don't even "need" to be a controlled substance, getting a patent, and selling the "new" thing under a quickly invoked controlled substances regime for twenty more years. Methylphenidate is not one of these molecules. It was discovered in the 1940s, relatively independently from amphetamine chemistry, and was popularised as a medicine in its own right, in some parts even as an "ADD" medicine before amphetamine's usability for this became known. A classic story of a chemist making a molecule, trying it out on his wife, and naming it after her.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 12:13 PM)
@Riley S. Faelan "We have invented lisdexamphetamine! It is a novel second generation ADHD drug!"
"It's got amphetamine in the name ..."
"Right, but it's a pro drug! It means it will release slowly and last all day!"
"OK, how does it work?"
"It has l-lysine dimesylate as an N-methyl bond which is then split inside blood cells giving a smooth all day experience!"
"Is that bullshit-speak for 'we invented a speed molecule too big to go through the mucous membranes so you can't snort it?"
"Er ... it ... might be?"
"Right. Let's pretend you actually did this for the patients' benefits and that they won't get a lucky dip experience day to day based on how many of god knows which base nutrients they might have consumed or not. How long does it actually last?"
"TWELVE TO FOURTEEN HOURS!"
"in adults"
"Adults don't get ADHD!"
"Pubic hair does not alter the function of defective synapses. Cut the crap. How long does
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@Riley S. Faelan "We have invented lisdexamphetamine! It is a novel second generation ADHD drug!"
"It's got amphetamine in the name ..."
"Right, but it's a pro drug! It means it will release slowly and last all day!"
"OK, how does it work?"
"It has l-lysine dimesylate as an N-methyl bond which is then split inside blood cells giving a smooth all day experience!"
"Is that bullshit-speak for 'we invented a speed molecule too big to go through the mucous membranes so you can't snort it?"
"Er ... it ... might be?"
"Right. Let's pretend you actually did this for the patients' benefits and that they won't get a lucky dip experience day to day based on how many of god knows which base nutrients they might have consumed or not. How long does it actually last?"
"TWELVE TO FOURTEEN HOURS!"
"in adults"
"Adults don't get ADHD!"
"Pubic hair does not alter the function of defective synapses. Cut the crap. How long does it actually last in adults?"
"Er, maybe eight hours?"
"..."
"Six"
"Thank you. And is it actually sustained release or do you just have to wait an hour for it to fucking do anything because of the reason?"
"Why are you asking us, a defenceless pharmaceutical company, these accurate and probing but very hurtful questions?"
(Truth in advertising, I love Elvanse but I wish they'd stop lying about how long it lasts and stop pretending adults are fine on the same dose as an eight year old)
FWIW, I'm pretty sure Elvanse's duration is dose-dependent. My last uptitration step was mostly to make sure that my evenings would be reliably covered when I take it in the morning.
AFAIU, its pharmacokinetic curve has three main components: the cleavage of the lysine dimesylate, which probably typically takes just one to two hours; the exponential decay curve of renal clearance after the amphetamine has become free in blood and gotten stocked up by the synapses, and some sort of effectiveness threshold. The exponential decay curve interacts with the effectiveness threshold in ways that are non-linear and can be non-intuitive to one who hasn't dabbled in calculus. But both components vary between people.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 1:14 PM)
30mg - started working in the first hour. Abruptly and violently ended 6 hours after that.
50mg - started working in the first hour. Abruptly and violently ended 7 1/2 hours after that.
70mg, which I've been taking for 14 months now - starts working in the first hour. Peaks about 3 hours in, sometimes with the propensity to make me just want to stare at the wall because it's very interesting and brain go quiet, for a bit, sometimes does fuck all. Ends moderately abruptly 7-8 hours after I take it.
At which point I take 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts 3 - 3 1/2 hours.
At which point I take 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts 2-3 hours.
And then I stop, unless I need my emergency "It's a long fucking day and I have to keep going for a bit longer" dose of 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts about an hour.
30mg - started working in the first hour. Abruptly and violently ended 6 hours after that.
50mg - started working in the first hour. Abruptly and violently ended 7 1/2 hours after that.
70mg, which I've been taking for 14 months now - starts working in the first hour. Peaks about 3 hours in, sometimes with the propensity to make me just want to stare at the wall because it's very interesting and brain go quiet, for a bit, sometimes does fuck all. Ends moderately abruptly 7-8 hours after I take it.
At which point I take 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts 3 - 3 1/2 hours.
At which point I take 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts 2-3 hours.
And then I stop, unless I need my emergency "It's a long fucking day and I have to keep going for a bit longer" dose of 10mg dexamphetamine sulphate which works in about 90 seconds and lasts about an hour.
You can see where this is going.
Honestly, I'd rather they cut the crap and just gave me 50mg dex a day to do with as I will but Oh No ThErE Is A dAnGeR oF DiVeRsIoN AnD HypErTeNsIoN.
(Bitch please. My BP off amphetamine is 130/90. On it it's 105/75)
This kind of sounds like your metabolism causes rapid swings, and the effectiveness threshold might be on the low side. Do you happen to know if taking, say, 30mg in the morning and 30mg in the aftrnoon, before the first dose runs out, might produce a friendlier curve in you?
Blood pressure of ADHD people going down on amphetamine is pretty common, AFAIK. The NT explanation is, it's because treating the ADHD reduces stress, but I kind of suspect that, at least in some forms of ADHD, the "paradoxical" effect of stimulants is directly applicable, kind of similarly to how RightHormones often directly improve a trans person's brain functions and happiness.
This entry was edited (Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 6:39 PM)
Oh, and — when the Concerta patent expires where you are, watch out for dextroamphetamine in an OROS delivery system, and consider asking your doctor about it when it becomes available. It kind of sounds like it might possibly work well for you.
@Riley S. Faelan Yeah. It's definitely not due to lower stress. I *HAVE* lower stress, but different stimulants affect me differently in terms of blood pressure.
Caffeine - mild effect on ADHD, blood pressure goes up.
Amphetamine - huge effect on ADHD, blood pressure goes "standing up is now FAFO"
Ephedrine - effect on ADHD comparable to caffeine. Blood pressure *craters*
That last one must utterly piss off anaesthetists.
I've tried splitting my Elvanse dose. It just weakens the first one and the second one does piss all. Elvanse 30 contains more dexamphetamine (eventually) than Amfexa 10 but the latter gives me 3 - 3 1/2 good hours and the former gives me 2 hours of "meh" (both after 70mg of Elvanse).
The whole "stimulants do the same in ADHD and non ADHD people once you account for the different baseline" thing is such obvious bullshit, brought to you by the same people responsible for such classics as "Only boys get this", "Only children get this", "This is never comorbid with autism", and, "emotional disregulation is not a symptom".
The real answer to those people is, “It doesn’t matter what you think you can tell. If you make a high priority of ruining the lives of people who are just trying to live in peace, you’re a monster and a loser.”
The only person who has a right to ask about someone’s A_AB status is a potential sexual partner.
You’re quite pretty, too. But that’s not relevant to your (valid) point, or mine. Not that you should care about the opinion of J. Random Guy (of a similar age).
Seeing Thurman take Daniel and Helen to see the construction site brings a whole new meaning to “the devil went down to Georgia”
Not sure what to make of the “billionaire secretly funds whole enterprise” thing. I guess it feels more in tune with our time but I liked the way it happened in the book: “we’re building a nuclear waste storage site. Nothing to see here. Just nuclear waste. Honest. It’s certainly not a ‘murdering the entire human race and chucking the survivors in 50 deep holes for 500 years thing’. Oh. Was that the out loud voice?”
I reckon I know what the end of S3 cliffhanger thingy is going to be. S1 and S2 departed from Wool quite a bit but S3 is taking Shift and completely scrambling it.
Wondering if Troy is going to give Mrs Simms the same line he gave Lukas Kyle in the book about how they all ended up down there?
I haven't read the books. I kind of lost track of what Helen and Daniel were trying to do before the car was hijacked. Following up on the missing audio tape? It feels like their narrative kind of abruptly hit a dead-end, and then there's two weeks of them confused in a car. Given the emphasis on the Pez dispenser, I'm guessing they won't be seeing the Sun again.
I'm also kind of wondering how they could have kept such a massive engineering project secret, even from Congress, especially considering its rather weird mix of retrofuturist tech; I'd have thought a more "conventional" design would have been cheaper and faster, and by cheaper and faster I mean, less implausible. Like, the scale of the excavation and construction for one of the vaults would have made Hoover Dam look easy.
@FoolishOwl OK, so S3 has diverged massively from Shift (Silo book 2), especially in the 21st century subplot. The silos are obviously being built for the same reason, but the details behind how they are getting built are rather different. In Shift they are not a secret project. They are not presented as things for humans to occupy though, but rather as a civil engineering project consisting of 50 concrete lined kilometre deep holes in the ground with a specific purpose, and Daniel (Donald in the book) is brought in by Thurman much earlier, and the whole cloak and dagger subplot is not there (neither is the Simms subplot; in Shift Lucas is straightforwardly Bernard's shadow).
Shift is also dramatic irony because we find out considerably before now WHAT the big threat is and what is killing the people sent out to clean (the residents of Silo 18 spend quite a lot of Shift trying to work it out and come to some very uncomfortable conclusions). They have left a LOT of clues in th
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@FoolishOwl OK, so S3 has diverged massively from Shift (Silo book 2), especially in the 21st century subplot. The silos are obviously being built for the same reason, but the details behind how they are getting built are rather different. In Shift they are not a secret project. They are not presented as things for humans to occupy though, but rather as a civil engineering project consisting of 50 concrete lined kilometre deep holes in the ground with a specific purpose, and Daniel (Donald in the book) is brought in by Thurman much earlier, and the whole cloak and dagger subplot is not there (neither is the Simms subplot; in Shift Lucas is straightforwardly Bernard's shadow).
Shift is also dramatic irony because we find out considerably before now WHAT the big threat is and what is killing the people sent out to clean (the residents of Silo 18 spend quite a lot of Shift trying to work it out and come to some very uncomfortable conclusions). They have left a LOT of clues in the programme, but I suspect most people who haven't read the books haven't worked it out yet.
The retrofuture tech is deliberate, and one of many things which look like plot holes in the books but aren't. This is not a "fallout" alternate universe; it's a plausible extension of our timeline. I think the 21st century flashbacks in Shift are set a bit later than the programme. Got the impression the Donald/Helen stuff was somewhere around 2060 in the book, and it feels like about 2040 here.
I read an overview of the books, but it didn't go into much detail. Probably fortunately. Like, it said Juliette made it to Silo 17 and came back, which left out almost everything in the last season.
@FoolishOwl So not gonna spoil you, but the memory drug subplot was someone else in the books and because of other narrative changes they can't do that in the same way.
But I'm pretty sure I figured out how they're going to do it.
The internet: Every part of the ephedra plant contains ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and methylephidrine which cause hypertension in humans and is therefore toxic.
Also the internet: Mormons harvested ephedra and made an infusion from it because they weren’t allowed caffeine. This is called Mormon tea.
Me: makes Mormon tea from harvested ephedra fragilis stems
so caffeine's bad, but ephedrine is fine. 🤷 (I've written ephedra into worldbuilding on one of my works in progress - coffee very hard to get, what do they substitute? in-world, I imagine mostly one of a couple of native ilexes, though mostly yaupon because it thrives in American zones. But where it doesn't, like the arid west? Ephedra. Apparently it thrives in arid to semi-arid settings like those in Utah.)
I was raised Mormon and the scriptures originally said something about "hot drinks" which was presumed to be coffee or tea and depending on which era or specific ward or branch interpreted it could apply to all caffeinated drinks. The ephedrine tea sounds like one of those things to technically follow scripture to the (interpreted) letter but not really in practice. And yeah, it can be pretty wonky and way too much of a stimulant.
This entry was edited (Tuesday, July 28, 2026, 10:13 PM)
@DeeAnn Little @FeralRobots There is, of course, also Sudafed which has the opposite chirality on the beta hydroxy but it's still beta hydroxy methamphetamine and you can buy it OTC in a pharmacy.
@chillicampari in the 90s you could still get straight ephedrine tablets OTC in the US. They'd have them at the cash register in convenience stores, where they now put 5 Hour Energy & whatnot. I used to get terrible racking coughs in the winter, & that was the only thing that could open up my chest a little. (Barely affected me otherwise, IIRC. That may have changed, I'm a bit more sensitive to caffeine in my old age than I used to be.)
Here in the US we have to show our driver's license & have our identity recorded in order to buy any pseudoephedrine products, because some people figured out how to cook meth from it. @chillicampari
@chillicampari yeah, I think American cookers had that process down, but my understanding is that it's rarely made that way anymore. Also I'm not convinced that pipeline ever had much of an impact on Meth supply, but security theater on the Sudafed supply was a way for people to pretend they were doing something.
@FeralRobots @DeeAnn Little Knowing that it's possible and that there's a shitoad of ephedra growing nearby does Gove me some comfort vs the fact that my meds are gatekept to all hell.
@Raimondas Lapinskas 🌍 Yes. This is an excellent reply to alluding to how fucking terrified I am of being attacked by the giant murder dolphins. Good talk.
im waiting to read the books so I can watch the show in complete suspense. I hope its the right choice. I also hope they don't adlib beyond the original story
@ATLeagle Definitely read the books first imo. I watched part of Silo S1 ... got hooked and then read the three books, and the short stories too before I returned to it.
Irrelevant stuff is things like Daniel was called Donald in the books, and they gender swapped Senator Thurman
Seasons 1&2 had some significant departures. The entire Simms plot line isn't in there. They don't know about the digger void. And some other stuff.
But this season is MASSIVELY different from Shift (book 2). It kinda had to be because unless the change really is radical as all hell, there's a reveal they need to do which simply would not work if you can see the characters as it was written.
So I'm interested to know where they're going with it.
Oh, and the flashback 21st century story is MASSIVELY different in the book, although the nature of the threat is the same, more or less.
Recent security patches from Apple and, I believe, others, have clamped down on accessing what are thought to be non local services on LAN, or something along those lines.
Which is utterly screwing my homeland stuff because it uses IPv6 and has globally routable addresses. Because it’s IPv6. And that’s how it works.
I have spent AGES trying to find the “bug” in my network config when there isn’t one.
Works if I access via Wireguard.
I am reduced to using a VPN to access my network. On my network.
I have a bunch of docker containers running network services. Each one has a globally routable IPv6 address. They're behind a firewall so that's fine. It does mean I can refer to them by name rather than IP address though, without needing multicast DNS.
I have spent WEEKS wondering why my iPhone and Mac struggle to connect to them.
Apple is being "helpful" by trying to proxy non local sites to avoid trackers.
The proxy can't reach them.
Because they're on my LAN.
Which is behind a firewall.
I turned the tracker prevention off and Everything. Just. Worked.
Silo (mild spoilers): clear why Apple TV changed the name of congressman Donald to Daniel.
Interesting that they gender swapped Thurman though. That means they’re gonna have to radically change the dynamics in Silo 1 because otherwise the conceit around Shift 3 doesn’t work. In the book it was readily believable. This time, “hey, wasn’t she supposed to be a she?” Is kinda hard to ignore.
Also I think they’ve made it bipartisan. In the book, every human left alive by the 26th century, which is about when it takes place, was descended from one US political party and the media.
A weird thing. When I was young and did not choose my own peer group, I was a fish out of water, a closeted queer visibly neurodivergent kid (tic disorders are hard to hide) in a mostly neurotypical setting and it was basically a running joke that I was “unfuckable”. People would use the idea of a relationship with me as the butt of a joke. The absurdity was, apparently, self-evident.
I believed this. Internalised this. Assumed I would die alone.
And over time, I subconsciously chose my social circle. I guess I gravitated towards people who didn’t require so much masking nor cause so much stress via what is now called the Double Empathy Problem.
These days, my interactions with neurotypical people tend to consist of whether I want milk in that, or how much ketchup I’d like.
And meanwhile, it appears a queue has formed because, as I am told, I am “fucking hot” (even in my 50s and middle aged lesbians are the filthiest fuckers alive. We do, as they say, the weird stuff. It’s great!)
That was … unexpected.
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A weird thing. When I was young and did not choose my own peer group, I was a fish out of water, a closeted queer visibly neurodivergent kid (tic disorders are hard to hide) in a mostly neurotypical setting and it was basically a running joke that I was “unfuckable”. People would use the idea of a relationship with me as the butt of a joke. The absurdity was, apparently, self-evident.
I believed this. Internalised this. Assumed I would die alone.
And over time, I subconsciously chose my social circle. I guess I gravitated towards people who didn’t require so much masking nor cause so much stress via what is now called the Double Empathy Problem.
These days, my interactions with neurotypical people tend to consist of whether I want milk in that, or how much ketchup I’d like.
And meanwhile, it appears a queue has formed because, as I am told, I am “fucking hot” (even in my 50s and middle aged lesbians are the filthiest fuckers alive. We do, as they say, the weird stuff. It’s great!)
I wish I could go back to my twenty something self and encourage him to have a bit more self confidence and less body image problems over being fat, because I was frankly a hottie. The ADHD rejection sensitivity did not help.
This entry was edited (Saturday, July 11, 2026, 12:21 PM)
(Just remembered this phrase originates in nineteenth-century German Imperialism. That wasn't my intent, obvs. I was going more for the Channel Four house-porn show vibes than the colonisation of Namibia).
The neurotypical response to speed (amphetamine) is still confusing me.
So the base mechanism is the same for everyone: amphetamine (alpha methyl phenethylamine) is a monoamine releasing agent. It displaces the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine (3, 4 dihydroxy phenethylamine) and noradrenaline (beta hydroxy 3, 4 dihydroxy phenethylamine - these are all really similar molecules) from the synapses, forcing them to circulate. It then acts as a reuptake inhibitor for both, and weakly agonises both.
So suddenly lots of dopamine and noradrenaline available. Right. Simple enough. That's how it treats ADHD, a condition marked by pathologically low circulation of both to the point that certain neural activity that's supposed to happen ... doesn't.
Now noradrenaline controls alertness, and too much in the peripheral nervous system cab cause tachycardia and anxiety. This is why we titrate up. The peripheral nervous system gets tolerant to it but the therapeutic effects in the central nervous system continue.
Dopamine is the interesting one here. It does lots of thi
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The neurotypical response to speed (amphetamine) is still confusing me.
So the base mechanism is the same for everyone: amphetamine (alpha methyl phenethylamine) is a monoamine releasing agent. It displaces the monoamine neurotransmitters dopamine (3, 4 dihydroxy phenethylamine) and noradrenaline (beta hydroxy 3, 4 dihydroxy phenethylamine - these are all really similar molecules) from the synapses, forcing them to circulate. It then acts as a reuptake inhibitor for both, and weakly agonises both.
So suddenly lots of dopamine and noradrenaline available. Right. Simple enough. That's how it treats ADHD, a condition marked by pathologically low circulation of both to the point that certain neural activity that's supposed to happen ... doesn't.
Now noradrenaline controls alertness, and too much in the peripheral nervous system cab cause tachycardia and anxiety. This is why we titrate up. The peripheral nervous system gets tolerant to it but the therapeutic effects in the central nervous system continue.
Dopamine is the interesting one here. It does lots of things, including acing as a neural "damper" (which is why we're hyperactive), but more significantly it controls the human motivation system. If something is worth doing, completion of that something is marked by a release of dopamine. This tends to be muted or doesn't happen in ADHD which is why emptying the dishwasher feels like a five thousand mile deathmarch across broken glass.
But you add amphetamine and circulating dopamine increases, which starts the reward system functioning.
Here's where I get confused. Keep going, and you spam the system with dopamine.
Which means you don't NEED to do anything to get the "reward".
Which is why, when my meds are peaking, I can occasionally just sit there and stare into space, feeling perfectly content. Keep going and I'll fall asleep.
In a neurotypical it will also flood the CNS with dopamine.
So why do they then get wired when they too are getting constantly rewarded for doing literally nothing?
the Rube Goldberg machine that is the CNS probably has a few more cogs in it that we don’t understand yet I’m just happy that sometimes brain go brrrrrr sometimes brain go honk shoo mimi Less often brain goes cloud of smoke
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Just based on having met a lot of wired people, I think it's extrapolation from a rewarding task: if something is pleasurable, then it should be done more which will surely be even better.
I think in people with ADHD there's a kind of plateau that I spot in myself, which many other people find hard to really understand, that if something is/was good then it's fine, it's done, it's good enough, great, all done. Let's move on. The problem is it's hard to reach that plateau without dopamine, etc, the plateau is high up. Without it, there's a lot of scrabbling in the foothills.
is it that you are usually doing a lot to get that dopamine hit, so that assumption flows back into your activity? Why am I not doing something, let’s get moving. Quite often these connections / flows go both ways, like if you’re happy you smile or laugh, but if you force yourself to smile or laugh it can then trigger the feeling.
I react very atypically to both speed and mdna. This probably explains why at psy trans nights everyone else is bouncing their tits off and I’m chilling with a chai latte and snoozing in the comfee sofa!
I'm mostly 0% beer because of work alcohol limits. If I get enough time off I do have to start working on the whiskey pouches as they're taking up cupboard space...
Same! Worse, the doctors in Wisconsin don’t even believe me. The only day I drink is Halloween, and that’s because it’s a neighborhood ritual with themed drinks being passed around.
This entry was edited (Monday, July 6, 2026, 1:37 PM)
It contains the highest concentration of ephedrine of any ephedra species. It’s native to southern Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Ephedrine is also known as beta hydroxy methamphetamine.
It works quite well as a cold medicine. The “beta hydroxy” part stops it crossing the blood brain barrier too much.
So it’s not meth.
But take away one teensy little oxygen molecule (this is non trivial and doing so may cause your house to explode. Also it’s very very very naughty and big men with guns might get upset), and it suddenly gets a whole lot more interesting.
Those following our journey south in our sailboat, Scarlet, from the Uk to Portugal know that we've been at it a few years. 2 years ago we left Gosport and eventually reached Quiberon in Brittany before we were stopped by our starter motor catching fire(!). We did engine repairs and maintenance there and overwintered for a year until last summer when a somewhat delayed start due to ADHD diagnosis getting in the way saw us reach Bilbao, where we spent last winter.
This year, when the weather allowed, we started moving again. We have now reached Muros in Galicia.
We knew this section, getting round the Galician rias, was going to be a race against time. It's an indented coastline with no safe shallows with treacherous rocks everywhere. If you stick to deep water you avoid it.
But every summer some of the population of Iberian orcas that spend winter and spring around the Strait of Gibraltar migrate north to Biscay to follow bluefin Tuna. And the only way to reliably avoid them is to stay in water of less than 20m depth. This is impossible in Galicia.
Our time
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Those following our journey south in our sailboat, Scarlet, from the Uk to Portugal know that we've been at it a few years. 2 years ago we left Gosport and eventually reached Quiberon in Brittany before we were stopped by our starter motor catching fire(!). We did engine repairs and maintenance there and overwintered for a year until last summer when a somewhat delayed start due to ADHD diagnosis getting in the way saw us reach Bilbao, where we spent last winter.
This year, when the weather allowed, we started moving again. We have now reached Muros in Galicia.
We knew this section, getting round the Galician rias, was going to be a race against time. It's an indented coastline with no safe shallows with treacherous rocks everywhere. If you stick to deep water you avoid it.
But every summer some of the population of Iberian orcas that spend winter and spring around the Strait of Gibraltar migrate north to Biscay to follow bluefin Tuna. And the only way to reliably avoid them is to stay in water of less than 20m depth. This is impossible in Galicia.
Our time has run out. Orcas have now been spotted north of Lisboa. They have arrived. We are still 3 rias from the Portuguese border.
So now we may be stuck, or at least have to watch VERY carefully for a window to JUST BLOODY RUN.
I'm part of the "orcas.pt" fleet, which is a group of mostly hobbyist sailors banding together to share information and advice about the orca situation. The "official" recommendations are terrible to the point that experts mostly prefer to work with our group, and as a result we get pretty good intel on where they are (some of them have GPS trackers I believe, but that exact info is only shared with the group admin because we don't want people looking for these animals).
Here's the rub. Orcas swim (when they aren't chasing something) at up to 50km per day. We have a pretty good read on where the danger areas are. Last sighting, draw a 50km circle for each 24 hours. Are you in it? Be afraid.
Almost no attacks have ever happened west of the 10th line of longitude, but we can't reasonably go out there in Scarlet. She is a 9 metre marina hopper absolutely not equipped for deep ocean sailing. Some people do cross the Atlantic in boats like that but they're nutters.
Also she is a deep fin keel with a single spade rudder; it will take very little orca action to pull our rudder clean off at which point there is a hole below the waterline that the rudder stock exited through and ... well, the boat sinks.
Unfortunately smaller sailboats with spade rudders which are most at risk from sinking on the first hit are amongst their favourite playthings. Contrary to the popular "orcas are going after the billionaires" narrative, the boats they trend to take are likely worth less than your car if you have a half decently paying job. Big motor yachts tend to steer by thrust vectoring and don't do "floating thing go spinny when I smack the shit out of its tail fin". They can also quite possibly outrun them which we absolutely cannot.
And then you abandon to liferaft after, assuming they haven't taken out your electrics (the batteries are back there), doing the whole mayday mayday mayday please send a fucking helicopter, I think these marine sheep spawn are going to eat me, HELP! thing (we have a handheld radio as well and iPhones can send distress signals even without cell coverage).
So anyway there you are in your liferaft, watching a load of your stuff go to the seabed, all three of you (probably. We usually have 3), throwing up (because throwing up in a liferaft is what you do. They are profoundly unpleasant spaces to spend any time), which surrounded by playful teenage delinquent 6 tonne murderfish who you have heard are VERY picky eaters and will only eat bluefin tuna and maybe octopus and definitely not human, honest, but which aren't above violently tossing floating shit around into the air for the lulz to see if it makes more fun vomiting and screaming noises, hoping that you don't drift into the rocks on what is literally called the "Coast of Death" when you translate the name into English.
So we're gonna like, properly pay attention to the "orca forecast", as it were.
And if we aren't absolutely certain it's safe to run for Vigo as fast as we fucking can, we may be stuck in Muros until autumn.
Let's see. Worst case we get the boat hauled out onto the hard and re-antifoul her (disgustingly messy but strangely pleasurable job).
if the worst does happen, assuming your boat is still floating and controllable after the first hit, apparently the thing to do is disengage autopilot, start the engine if not already running, apply FULL throttle, and motor directly away from the pod (preferably towards shallow water) as fast as possible. They can swim faster than the boat can go, but remember, they're juveniles doing it for a laugh, and apparently if they wander off from the pod by more than about 300 metres their mothers yell at them to come back.
"Aw mum! I was sinking the thing!"
"You can sink the thing after you've eaten your dinner, now come HERE"
"Dinner is tuna again. It's always tuna. I'm BOOOOORED. Can I have beef?"
OOH, I wish you v well in your escape from terf island. And as a sailor I really do not like any boat being sunk. Really not.
OTOH, humans have arrogantly fecked most of the planet. So I kinda love the ability of any set of animals to make a big no-go zone for humans. And the idea that it's all lolz invented by juvenile delinquent whales is objectively feckin hilariously funny.
Hope you stay safe. And also that someone makes a boat-flipping cartoon from the #orca pov.
@kincaid Yeah, that was my thought, too. A toddler cannot match anything in speed. They literally can't go the same speed as themself most of the time.
haha I had to get an EKG before they would give me the speed.
But when I was desperate for estrogen patches they refused until I personally appeared for a blood pressure reading despite the fact that they had 6 years of blood pressure records on me and it has always been LOW.
But I have come to believe that gynecologists just want me to suffer to punish me for refusing to breed for the patriarchy.
This entry was edited (Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 11:37 AM)
Sarah Brown
in reply to Sarah Brown • •Oh. I like how nobody is asking the obvious question.
About Bernard.
I expect they’ll get to that.
They changed the Silo 17 thing around a bit. I get why. In the books you were kinda left to work out the precise details of what actually happened out there right at the start. It was very heavily implied but never spelled out.
And I saw some people who read it and then completely missed the central point of WHY they were down there.
I suspect they’re gonna lay it on a bit more thickly here. Perhaps Troy will do some helpful exposition?
Assuming he works it out for himself. I assume he knows how the people sent out to clean die. No reason he wouldn’t.