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Author: Confluence

Thrive

Vox: The extraordinary therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs, explained

Reading Time: 19 minutesSupport for psychedelics is also one of those rare issues that can, in some cases, cut across conventional political lines. Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire Republican financier and co-owner of Breitbart, has donated a $1 million to MAPS to fund studies and legalization effort. As the research advances, we could see more bipartisan support like this.

One big remaining question has to do with access. If you spend any time at all in the psychedelic subculture, you can’t help but notice that it consists mostly of privileged white people. This is largely a product of who’s holding these spaces, how much they cost (anywhere from $600 to well over $1,000 per session), where they’re being held, and the networks of people propping them up. That many people simply don’t know about the therapeutic potential of psychedelics is yet another barrier. All of this has to change, and hopefully, it will when psychedelics aren’t relegated to the underground.

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Thrive

Combatting Cold and Flu Season

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhile you may not be able to avoid illness entirely, you can take steps to protect yourself from the common cold and more serious bugs like the flu.

This cold and flu season, keep essentials on-hand from thermometers that can help you diagnose a fever quickly to humidifiers and heated blankets that can potentially help shorten your recovery time.

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Informed

Vox: What’s actually happening at the US-Mexico border, explained

Reading Time: 12 minutesThe Trump administration likes to cite statistics from areas where barriers have already been built, followed by a drop in apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants.

That’s how it’s supposed to work — because the wall was designed to get them to go somewhere else.

The purpose of physical barriers is what border agents call “funneling” — pushing people to cross where they can be more easily apprehended by Border Patrol.

That funneling can be helpful to ensure that Border Patrol agents catch as many people as possible, or to focus them on tracking more sophisticated criminal efforts.

But that doesn’t mean that you can reduce the overall number of people coming into the US by building as much wall as possible.

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Informed

New York Times: The People vs. Donald J. Trump

Reading Time: 12 minutesFinally, there is the hope — naïve though it may seem — that some Republicans will choose to act on principle. There now exists a small club of former Trump administration officials who were widely respected before joining the administration and whom Trump has sullied, to greater or lesser degrees. It includes Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis. Imagine if one of them gave a television interview and told the truth about Trump. Doing so would be a service to their country at a time of national need. It would be an illustration of duty.

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