Mike Jay
@mikejay.bsky.social
đ€ 1595
đ„ 287
đ 116
http://mikejay.net
pinned post!
Coming in October
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
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Wireheads
The story of the mavericks and scientists, crackpots and artistic visionaries who imagined a future where machines fuse with our mindsAs humanity and technol...
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300278880/wireheads/
2 months ago
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Paperback ÂŁ6 this month from Yale, same deal on Psychonauts and Free Radicals
yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...
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Mescaline - Yale University Press London
A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity Mescaline became a popul...
https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300257502/mescaline/
8 days ago
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publicdomainreview.org/essay/magic-...
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Magic by Return of Post: How Mail Order Delivered the Occult
What allowed occultism to blossom in the United States at the turn of the 20th century? Linotype machines, cheap pulp paper, and newly improved postal networks. Allan Johnson investigates the forgotte...
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/magic-by-return-of-post/
8 days ago
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On the horizon for October
www.waterstones.com/events/wireh...
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Wireheads - An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain: an evening with Mike Jay | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones
Events at Waterstones get you closer to the books and authors you admire most. Find information and tickets about Wireheads - An Unnatural History of Technology in the Brain: an evening with Mike Jay ...
https://www.waterstones.com/events/wireheads-an-unnatural-history-of-technology-in-the-brain-an-evening-with-mike-jay/london-gower-street
8 days ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
14 days ago
âOn May 5th, at night, after walking for an hour amidst the scenery of the Avon, at this period rendered exquisitely beautiful by bright moonshine; my mind being in a state of agreeable feeling, I respired six quarts of newly prepared nitrous oxide....â
publicdomainreview.org/essay/o...
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www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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Do octopus brains work like humansâ â or is there another way to be smart?
Just like vertebrates, cephalopods â such as octopuses and squid â have elaborate brains. Neuroscientists are flocking to them for insights into how intelligence evolved.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01302-4
19 days ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
29 days ago
âa peculiar lightness ... a horrible feeling of impending death ... a beautiful purplish hue ... My body seemed to be fashioned from woodâ â from a New York physicianâs 1884 âtrip reportâ after ingesting cannabis and ergot (proto-LSD). More in our latest post:
publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...
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âA Beautiful Purplish Hueâ: Frank Dudley Beaneâs Experience with Ergot and Cannabis Indica (1884)
An early contribution to drug literature, in which a man came to be fashioned out of wood.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/experience-with-ergot-and-cannabis/
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When the legend becomes factâŠ
mikejay.net/bicycle-day-...
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Bicycle Day Revisited - Mike Jay
What really happened on the first acid trip?
https://mikejay.net/bicycle-day-revisited/
30 days ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Max Daly
about 1 month ago
I wrote a piece about why America, perhaps surprisingly, is falling out of love with cocaine. It's about cultural and economic shifts, plus exaggerated fears that most cocaine contains fentanyl.
san.com/cc/why-ameri...
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Why America is falling out of love with cocaine
America's cocaine use is quietly collapsing â even as the drug floods the market at record purity and historic low prices.
https://san.com/cc/why-america-is-falling-out-of-love-with-cocaine/
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Mike Jay
JT Lindroos
about 1 month ago
Finished
@mikejay.bsky.social
's PSYCHONAUTS. Been a fan since reading his essays in Fortean Times and Anomalist (great piece on Coleridge!). Approachable, with deep insights. Text runs from Freud to Yeats, H.G. Wells, to Crowley, Blavatsky to Baudelaire. Bold, rich, nuanced.. and fun! đ„
#BookSky
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phys.org/news/2026-04...
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Engineered tobacco plant can produce five psychedelics, including psilocybin and DMT
Compounds in psychedelic drugs like DMT, psilocybin, and psilocin are naturally produced in certain plants, fungi, and animals, and have a long history of use in spiritual and therapeutic contexts. No...
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-tobacco-psychedelics-psilocybin-dmt.html
about 2 months ago
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www.arte.tv/de/videos/12...
Have humans always intoxicated themselves? My thoughts, from the Poison Garden in Alnwick, overdubbed in German
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Haben Menschen sich schon immer berauscht? - Stimmt es, dass ...? - Die ganze Doku | ARTE
Ist der Drogenrausch ein neues PhĂ€nomen â entstanden in einer genusssĂŒchtigen Gesellschaft, die keine Grenzen mehr kennt? Funde tausende Jahre alter Drogenartefakte wecken Zweifel. Der Rausch scheint ...
https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/123938-002-A/haben-menschen-sich-schon-immer-berauscht/
about 2 months ago
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www.skeptic.com/article/sell...
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Selling Fear and Half-Truths: The Latest 60 Minutes âExposĂ©â on Havana Syndrome
60 Minutes has aired four Havana Syndrome exposĂ©sâbut two intelligence assessments say attacks are âhighly unlikely.â Robert Bartholomew, a scholar of mass delusion, reveals the omissions, conflicts o...
https://www.skeptic.com/article/selling-fear-half-truths-latest-60-minutes-expose-havana-syndrome/
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
2 months ago
The Dream-God (1874) - One man's account of his intense and elaborate visions while under the influence of morphine, including 500 foot lizards and conversations with Confucius and Zoroaster. Read it here:
http://bit.ly/17TOGOF
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Coming in October
yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
loading . . .
Wireheads
The story of the mavericks and scientists, crackpots and artistic visionaries who imagined a future where machines fuse with our mindsAs humanity and technol...
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300278880/wireheads/
2 months ago
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m75...
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Historical Currents in Psychedelics | J. Christian Greer & Mike Jay | Academic to Academic
YouTube video by Axess Television
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m75rOlI48k
2 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Psychedelic Press
3 months ago
Psilocybe Pickers tells the story of how these psychedelic fungi entered British consciousness in the twentieth century, the bemushroomed Britons who took them on as part of their culture, and how the authorities tried to police them.
psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/psi...
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Psilocybe Pickers by Robert Dickins
Psilocybe Pickers tells the story of how these psychedelic fungi entered British consciousness in the twentieth century, the bemushroomed Britons who took them on as part of their culture, and how the...
https://psychedelicpress.co.uk/products/psilocybe-pickers
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Odd This Day
3 months ago
27 February? That can only mean one thing. YES, THATâS RIGHT! Itâs 175 years to the day since George Merryweather gave a three-hour lecture to the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society about his leech barometer đ§”
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Mike Jay
London Review of Books
3 months ago
âMost of the tropes that came to define the vampire â neck-biting, blood-drinking or invisibility in mirrors â are recent inventions, though some, such as the protective virtue of garlic, do have a historical basis.â
@mikejay.bsky.social
on the dangerous dead.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
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Mike Jay · Demand Stolen Rings: The Dangerous Dead
Itâs understandable that the dead should be angry or vengeful: after all, they have suffered a terrible calamity....
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n03/mike-jay/demand-stolen-rings
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Mike Jay
MIT Press
4 months ago
Sleep paralysis, somnambulism, hypnic jerks: weâve all drifted through the borderlands of sleep & wakefulness. Those borderlands have preoccupied philosophers, scientists, & novelists, from Montaigneâs âmost profound and maddest fanciesâ to E.M. Cioranâs warning of sleepâs âfrightening importance.â
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Daydreamers and Sleepwalkers: Crossing the Borderlands of the Unconscious
Scientists and philosophers have spent centuries studying sleep. Each descent only deepens the mystery.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/daydreamers-and-sleepwalkers-crossing-the-borderlands-of-the-unconscious/
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Only recently learned that A MAN CALLED HORSE and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE are both based on short stories by a little-known female author. Both in this collection which is solidly excellent.
4 months ago
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theconversation.com/a-century-ag...
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A century ago, John Logie Baird achieved a landmark moment in television history. The viewers werenât convinced
In Soho, London, 100 years ago, John Logie Bairdâs mechanical television system broadcast recognisable human faces for the first time.
https://theconversation.com/a-century-ago-john-logie-baird-achieved-a-landmark-moment-in-television-history-the-viewers-werent-convinced-274089
4 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Noema Magazine
4 months ago
âIf we conflate the richness of biological brains & human experience with the information-processing machinations of deepfake-boosted chatbots, or whatever the latest AI wizardry is, we do our minds, brains & bodies a grave injustice.â â
@anilseth.bsky.social
, winner of
@berggruen.org
Essay Prize
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The Mythology Of Conscious AI | NOEMA
Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.
https://www.noemamag.com/the-mythology-of-conscious-ai/?utm_source=noemabluesky&utm_medium=noemasocial
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The most detailed account yet of the Liberty Capâs emergence - highly recommended đ
add a skeleton here at some point
5 months ago
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nhmu.utah.edu/articles/exp...
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Experts Explore New Mushroom Which Causes Fairytale-Like Hallucinations
Between traditional folklore and modern biology, the wild forest floor and the sterile scientific laboratory, lies the story of the lilliputian mushroom.
https://nhmu.utah.edu/articles/experts-explore-new-mushroom-which-causes-fairytale-hallucinations
5 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Rich Haridy
6 months ago
In the middle of a wild wkend at Entheogenesis Australis' Garden States. Missing way too much but what I have caught has been deeply engaging. Below daytime is Dave Nickles dropping bombs on the local community and night time is
@mikejay.bsky.social
going deep on mescaline art.
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Tim Nicholson
6 months ago
Still a few tickets left for this event with the amazing
@mikejay.bsky.social
tonight 6-7.30 at
@kingsioppn.bsky.social
All welcome as Mike discusses his new book on the discovery of N2O & the birth of psychedelic scienceđđ
add a skeleton here at some point
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Mike Jay
MIT Press
6 months ago
From ancient dream theory to hypnosis, somnambulism to psychedelic mind-expansion, "The Unconscious" by Antonio Melechi traces the wider social and scientific history of the unconscious mind. Coming in February!
mitpress.mit.edu/978026205102...
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www.kcl.ac.uk/events/free-...
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Free Radicals - In conversation with Mike Jay | King's College London
Mike Jay will discuss with Dr Matt Butler the fascinating stories and cast of characters involved in the discovery of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) which is the subject of his latest book Free Radicals...
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/free-radicals-in-conversation-with-mike-jay
6 months ago
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mikejay.net/we-burn-to-r...
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We Burn to Remember - Mike Jay
Bonfire Night in Lewes: its riotous origins and survival against the odds
https://mikejay.net/we-burn-to-remember/
7 months ago
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Mike Jay
Bethlem Museum of the Mind
7 months ago
#OnThisDay
in 1977 the artist William Kurelek died. His 1953 autobiographical painting, The Maze, painted during his time as a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, continues to captivate visitors to Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Discover this intriguing artwork here:
bit.ly/MOTMMaze
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
7 months ago
Listen to a series of recordings made by the ethnographer James Mooney in 1894 of different Native American Ghost Dance songs. According to the Library Of Congress notes that accompany the recordings, the performances are probably by Mooney himself â
publicdomainreview.org/collection/j...
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
8 months ago
The tragic story of James Tilly Matthews, a former peace activist of the Napoleonic Wars confined to Bedlam asylum in 1797 for believing that his mind was under the control of the âAir Loomâ â a terrifying machine which was brainwashing politicians:
publicdomainreview.org/essay/i...
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âTis the seasonâŠ
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Mushrooms in Wonderland - Mike Jay
Was Victorian fairy art and lore inspired by actual experiences with mind-altering fungi?
https://mikejay.net/mushrooms-in-wonderland/
8 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Erowid Center
8 months ago
"Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Mind" by Mike Jay "âŠMike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism." Mike is always a great read!
erowid.org/books/psycho...
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Erowid Center
8 months ago
Erowid needs your support. Donate toward real, honest info about psychedelics plants & drugsâŠfor harm reduction, benefit enhancement, and the history books. Matching challenge! $20-$499 donations are DOUBLED $500-$3,000 donations are TRIPLED
Erowid.org/sept_drive
Donate and help spread the word!
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reposted by
Mike Jay
The Public Domain Review
8 months ago
From fairy-rings to Lewis Carroll's Alice, mushrooms have long been entwined with the supernatural in art + literature. @MikeJayNet on early reports of mushroom-induced trips and how one species became established as a stock motif of Victorian fairyland.
publicdomainreview.org/essay/f...
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Rich Haridy
8 months ago
If you're anywhere in Australia at the end of Nov then I'd suggest you make your way here. This is the first outdoor entheogenesis conference in 8 yrs. An incredible event with a sharp line up of speakers.
@mikejay.bsky.social
@tehseennoorani.bsky.social
@pyrodelic.bsky.social
@gmantic.bsky.social
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reposted by
Mike Jay
London Review of Books
9 months ago
âOne veteran shaman, returning from his first experience performing at a top-dollar eco-lodge, asked the ayahuasca researcher Stephan Beyer why these people had come halfway round the world to see him when they werenât sick.â @mikejay.bsky.social on shamanism:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
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Mike Jay · Priest of the Devil: On Shamanism
âShamanismâ, as a concept, is of course a Western invention, and from the earliest cross-cultural encounters it was...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n16/mike-jay/priest-of-the-devil
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reposted by
Mike Jay
manvir singh
9 months ago
Thrilled to see this mammoth review of "Shamanism" in
@lrb.co.uk
from master drug historian
@mikejay.bsky.social
!
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
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Mike Jay · Priest of the Devil: On Shamanism
âShamanismâ, as a concept, is of course a Western invention, and from the earliest cross-cultural encounters it was...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n16/mike-jay/priest-of-the-devil
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Bethlem Museum of the Mind
9 months ago
Ever dreamt of being chased, falling, or flying? Our new exhibition, 'Between Sleeping and Waking', will bring together 200 years of artwork to show you are not alone! Opening this Thursday, 14 August *à©â©â§âË
bit.ly/MOTM_dreams
Image: Let There Be Light, Edgar Farrar, 1943.
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Out in paperback in the US today
mikejay.net/books/free-r...
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FREE RADICALS - Mike Jay
How a Group of Romantic Experimenters Gave Birth to Psychedelic Science
https://mikejay.net/books/free-radicals/
10 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Neil Denny
10 months ago
On today's new Little Atoms podcast,
@mikejay.bsky.social
on his latest book Free Radicals. Out now from
@yalebooks.bsky.social
. Listen to it wherever you get your podcasts or here:
shows.acast.com/b5fe8d16-751...
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Little Atoms 962 - Mike Jay's Free Radicals | Little Atoms
A Podcast about Ideas and Culture
https://shows.acast.com/b5fe8d16-7518-4208-861b-e1ec5ce88192/68823a9de0a86cc3abb1a2a3
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Talking FREE RADICALS and the discovery of nitrous oxide
www.drugscience.org.uk/podcast/epis...
10 months ago
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Behind the scenes at the Pneumatic Institution, with Tim Haigh
bookspodcast.com
11 months ago
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Iâll be down under for this in Nov/Dec
www.gardenstates.org
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EGA Garden States: Regeneration
https://www.gardenstates.org/
11 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Peder Clark
11 months ago
late to this but easily the best thing that's been written on the history of ketamine to date. i dream of visiting john lilly's archive at stanford...
add a skeleton here at some point
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On the gas in Bath tomorrow
www.brlsi.org/whatson/free...
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Free Radicals! Thomas Beddoes, Humphrey Davy and the Pneumatic Institute of Bristol â Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
At the very end of eighteenth century, the distinguished Oxford chemist Dr Thomas Beddoes founded a new private medical research clinic, The Pneumatic Institute, where together with his brilliant assi...
https://www.brlsi.org/whatson/free-radicals-thomas-beddoes-humphrey-davy-and-the-pneumatic-institute-of-bristol
11 months ago
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The mighty Sia get due recognition in Audubon - great piece by
@rachelnuwer.bsky.social
www.audubon.org/magazine/nat...
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This Native-Run Raptor Center Is Safeguarding Sacred Birds, Feathers, and Practices
A Comanche-led conservation project takes on an increasingly urgent mission: protecting the birds revered by many tribes while preserving traditions at the heart of their culture.
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/native-run-raptor-center-safeguarding-sacred-birds-feathers-and-practices
11 months ago
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Bristolians: launching FREE RADICALS at the Bookhaus on Wednesday
www.bookhausbristol.com/events/
11 months ago
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reposted by
Mike Jay
Transform Drug Policy Foundation
11 months ago
This guest blog by
@mikejay.bsky.social
Mike Jay was originally published in the New Statesman, reproduced with permission Mike Jay is a cultural historian, author, & former Transform Trustee
mikejay.net
His books include the recent: 'Psychonauts: drugs & the making of the modern mind' 2/
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