Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to BenWilson,
You’ll get the same effect from two doses of half strength as one dose of full strength.
Possibly, in the way that four big macs equate to one decent restaurant meal, but I’m picturing The Freak Brothers without the humour.
Numerous trips to Amsterdam with Lloyd Cole’s "Lost Weekend" as the enduring background track cured me of over-strength weed decades ago. (The B52s "Channel Z" also deserves an honourable mention). Plant genetics have moved on to the point where strength is less of a prime metric than effect and flavour… go you good terpenes. It just so happens that the varieties I prefer and which work best for me start at 15% and head north.
I’m looking forward to legalisation as I hadn’t expected to see it in NZ in my lifetime. To speaking with a knowledgeable budtender and being able to purchase something different, trying some new strains. And maybe sharing coffee and a bud with friends in a congenial legal setting. It all sounds quite civilised. May it happen.
Subtler things like taste, smell, quality of experience and brand recognition will demand premiums.
Yep, they already do.
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Ross Bell,
I’d genuinely love to know how you have determined the strength of the cannabis you consume. How do you know it’s 20 or 30%? And do you know the CBD ratios too? I’m concerned that there are too many strains that are full on THC with little to no CBD to moderate it.
If you don’t have a friend who works in a lab and without access to legal testing, there tends to be a reliance on analytical information provided by seed banks. I’m told they’re dependable and are probably preferable to scoring a dodgy seedling of unknown provenance that somebody’s mate down the pub can get hold of and which has a 50% chance of being riddled with soil gnats or other pests.
A lot of seed bank strains run 15-25% these days, without much CBD for balance, so pegging official THC levels at 8-10% would probably inspire experimentation by regular users. To me an advantage of a higher THC strain is that you use less of it. Like a good malt whiskey. Sort of.
Maybe I mix with the wrong people, but I get the impression that consumer sophistication has developed over the years as the availability of strains has improved. For me it’s bubblegum – an up-and-at-em (c.f. couch potato) strain which sends my arthritis pain to the background, is not too heavy, a bit giggly and can be wonderfully creative – that’s around 15.5% THC and >1% CBD. But some samples test up to 19% so that would fall outside even a 15% limit.
I can’t find any evidence of sub-10% levels in other legal markets. I’d argue that rather than restricting levels, a tax based on THC content seems like a winner. Given the choice between a nice over-proof whiskey at $150 or a bottle of something serviceable for $75, the majority will be motivated by price.
If the ultimate aim is to regulate and eventually integrate the black market, limiting THC to 10% suggests something nearer to bush weed which to be honest, just isn’t that appealing any longer.
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After saying earlier I thought "the 15% THC limit feels low as many popular strains currently come in around the 20% mark", I was surprised to read this from Ross Bell.
Under the proposed regime, authorities could restrict dried cannabis to contain no more than 15 percent THC - the main psychoactive ingredient.
The foundation's director Ross Bell said that seems too much.
"The work that I've seen done by ESR shows that generally New Zealand cannabis on the black market is about 6 to 8 percent which I think is a more reasonable number."
That may have been the case back when it was all 'NZ Green', but plant genetics have moved on apace and the tastier varieties all test way higher than 8%. Is most of the street level supply in NZ analytically this close to being low-impact bush weed? Is that what the gangs have been churning out all this time?
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Hard News: Has Iran found an effective…, in reply to linger,
the virus spines burst the elderberries...
Aha. That explains why the virus is almost always coloured blue in infographics. It's the elderberry juice.
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Hard News: Has Iran found an effective…, in reply to linger,
I am now picturing a virus covered in little elderberries, though I’m sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The scale is massively wrong for a start…
Nah... we've all seen the graphics and the coronavirus has little stalks sticking out, like upsidedown plungers or badly drawn daleks. Elderberries! Pfft!
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Russell Brown,
While some of the more civilised consumption methods may not be commercially available for a start, in theory we'll all be able to grow four plants per bubble. Anyone who theoretically invested in a Magic Butter Maker would be able to produce a range of healthy and delicious edibles at home.
Warning: when the Amazon algorithm keeps "suggesting" you need gummy bear moulds, you know that big data has your number.
Aside: Does anyone else think in bubbles now?
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Radiation: The immortals, in reply to Trevor Nicholls,
I’ll have you know that this particular lonely Norwegian sax player is one of the greatest jazz voices of the late 20th and early 21st century. You philistine!
There was a period in my life when ECM jazz inspired me. Jarrett, Metheny, Pastorius… if you couldn’t whistle along to a track, so much the better. While I still love Metheny, over the years my tastes have mellowed and I’ve reached that age where wailing soprano sax equates to fingernails on blackboards. My apologies to the unknown Norwegian.
Our daughter escaping from Germany and joining our bubble has introduced different music to our lives. Thankfully there hasn’t been too much German metal, cos I don’t do metal. But some of the dance / electronica has been pretty inspiring... motivational... uplifting even.
I’d almost forgotten the joy of discovering new music. That’s been a real lockdown positive.
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Pass the joint and praise the Lord! Big Canna has been excluded. Canadian pot money has been distorting world markets for a while, even if some of the bigger players like Canopy Growth seem to be heading out the back door at the moment.
The social equity provisions are excellent, especially the ongoing monitoring element. And we are going to be allowed some form of coffee bars. Good. That's just civilised.
It feels a bit churlish to criticise, but the 15% THC limit feels low as many popular strains currently come in around the 20% mark. That creates an obvious and sizeable niche for the black market. And while that 14g limit still seems silly -- akin to limiting spirit sales to half bottles, that's surely bound improve over time.
I'd have to say I've been looking forward to some pleasant retail experiences post-legalisation. But no looking, smelling or becoming in any way informed about the product you're buying? Seriously? If diseminating helpful information at retail is going to be this crippled, we may as well buy via mail order.
But hey, as a starting point I'm very happy with what we've seen so far. I really had not expected to be this close to common sense legalisation in my country, in my lifetime. Bring on the referendum.
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Radiation: The immortals, in reply to Russell Brown,
After playing admin on a large board for years I sympathise. We were running open source phpBB forums in a NZ/AU only context and as we gained popularity, more bots and trolls infested us daily. There really should be switches on every admin control panel offering:
Bots - Y/N, Trolls - Y/N
But there's not. Admin confirmation of new signups helped us initially. We also deployed a handy extension that compared signup IPs and flagged the duplicates -- spot the spammer -- that was brilliant! Plus captchas, Spamhaus checks and even bot confusers. But in the end geoblocking -- "Russia, Romania... be gone!" -- helped to reduce the flow most effectively.
Our blocklist was populated by IP ranges and the main text file eventually bloated out and became massive. I had half the world blocked via IP which in geek terms felt pretty god-like.
But all of these measures eat up time and we finally closed the board in January. Our main purpose had run its course, most of our users had migrated to social media for their daily fix and the enormous relief of finally switching off over fifteen years of spambots was just wonderful.
Disclaimer: this is just me waffling about older tech and I'm sure others will have more elegant solutions.
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Radiation: The immortals, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
They have become more profuse recently and I feel sorry for Russell having to deal with them most days. In generic terms, geo-blocking works but is a hassle, while admin approval of new signups slows genuine users. There's no easy answer except swatting them like flies as they pop up.