Florida just can’t help itself in bungling its adjudication of marijuana laws sometimes, as a great grandmother was arrested in Disney World for carrying CBD oil. Sixty-nine-year-old Hester Jordan Burkhalter reportedly spent 12 hours in jail before being released on a $2,000 bond on charges of hashish possession. Though the Orange County Sheriff’s Office says their deputy was following the law in the arrest, the charges were later dropped.
The details make this story rather tragic: A doctor recommended CBD oil to Burkhalter to alleviate pain and symptoms from her arthritis. She had that note of recommendation on her person at the time of arrest, but police say that doesn’t matter. What’s worse is Burkhalter’s bottle of peppermint CBD oil explicitly stated it contained zero milligrams of THC. But police tested the oil and said they found traces of THC, triggering the arrest.
The caveat here, of course, is that if Burkhalter did pull an okey-doke (a.k.a. replacing pure CBD oil with a THC-infused tincture into the bottle), then the cops aren’t really at fault here. They just did their jobs.
While astute readers know the 2018 Farm Bill effectively legalized CBD products nationwide, Florida contended otherwise at the time of the arrest. Hemp and CBD fell under a gray area, as “some lawyers argue the federal government’s action trumps Florida laws, which generally don’t differentiate hemp from marijuana,” explained the Tampa Bay Times. “Others say hemp is still illegal in Florida until the Legislature says otherwise.”
The sad irony in all this is Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried was successful in pushing through hemp legislation just last week. On the penultimate day of Florida’s legislative session, the Legislature approved a bill that would allow the state to create its own hemp program thanks to a bipartisan push. However, hemp remains illegal in the state until July 1, according to The Miami Herald.
So yes Burkhalter’s story is disappointing and could’ve been avoided. Generally, police had been hands off in punishing people carrying CBD products. “The few examples of police cracking down have been against retailers, not consumers,” reports the Times. But apparently a 69-year-old great-grandmother in Disney World was too much a menace to society for police to ignore.
What was once unabashed hype for the final season of Game of Thrones has slowly trickled into lashes of criticism at showrunners Benioff and Weiss. Inconsistencies of plot development and an inability to contend seriously with the story’s fantasy elements have unnerved book readers and audience members alike. Consequences don’t matter like they once did on the show, and characters act out of pocket with little explanation or build-up as to why.
So we wonder: How does the story’s architect, George R.R. Martin, feel about all this? In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Martin opined that he has “mixed feelings” about the show concluding his fantasy epic before he can with his books.
“It’s been an incredible ride,” he said back in March. “And almost all of it has been great. Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn’t gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that.”
Other public comments from the author has also hinted at some struggle internally between what has happened with the show as of late. When discussing collaboration in an April interview with Fast Company, Martin said working with a team can be “very exhilarating, but it can also be traumatic. Sometimes their creative vision and your creative vision don’t match. Then you get the famous ‘creative differences’ thing that leads to a lot of conflict.”
But perhaps the clearest suggestion of Martin’s feelings regarding Game of Thrones’ conclusion involves earlier comments he made about the endings of Lost and Battlestar Galactica. When Game of Thrones first debuted back in 2011, Martin did a heavy press tour to promote the show. And a reoccurring topic of conversation for Martin at this time was how much he loathed Lost’s finale.
“We watched [Lost] every week trying to figure it out, and as it got deeper and deeper I kept saying, ‘They better have something good in mind for the end. This better pay off here.’ And then I felt so cheated when we got to the conclusion,” he told The New Yorker.
“I want to give them something terrific,” Martin said of finishing his books. “What if I fuck it up at the end? What if I do a Lost? Then they’ll come after me with pitchforks and torches.”
But Martin was even more upset about how Battlestar Galactica ended.
At the risk of starting another ‘feud,’ let me say that I was a huge fan of Ron Moore’s revival of Battlestar Galactica (though not of the original, which most of us in the SF community still call Battlestar Ponderosa), but I hated the ending of that series even more than I hated the ending of Lost,” he said.
“But I still think Battlestar Galactica (the new one) was a superior achievement. Yes, the ending was terrible (though, as a caveat, I am not sure that there is ANY way to resolve that premise in a way that I’d like, and god knows the way the new show ended was infinitely preferable to what happened with the original Battlestar Ponderosa) … but those great early episodes don’t become any less great because later episodes sucked,” he added.
We’ll let you read between the lines of how Martin might feel about Game of Thrones as it ends its epic run.
There was reason for optimism surrounding marijuana legislation in Texas. Hope revolved around a growing momentum in the state around both decriminalizing and expanding its tiny, somewhat-broken medical marijuana program due to a majority swell. But in Texas, a minority can maintain an awful lot of political power.
First, the positives. The Texas House overwhelmingly approved legislation that would legalize the production, regulation, and sale of hemp in late April. Thanks to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s shepherding of the 2018 Farm Bill, it’s opened a door conservative states to usher in similar legislation without upsetting its party or voter base. Though the Texas hemp bill still requires passage in the more conservative state Senate, Republican leaders, who are adamantly against other key marijuana bills this legislation session, have offered little to no opposition.
In fact, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who heads the Texas Senate, commented this week with interest around the hemp bill, which would create a marketplace for CBD products in the state. “I want to make sure what consumers are buying is the real deal,” said Patrick, according to State Sen. Charles Perry.
But it’s also Patrick who looms villainously regarding other key pieces of marijuana legislation. A bill that would decriminalize marijuana possession from a class B to a class C misdemeanor (the same as a traffic ticket) received final approval in the House at the end of April. Ahead of the legislative session this year, advocates were hopeful around decriminalization thanks to the public approval of such a measure by ultra-conservative Gov. Greg Abbott last year. In addition, Texas Republicans added marijuana decriminalization as a plank to their party platform last summer, as well as expansion of the state’s medical marijuana program.
Patrick, however, does not agree with such sentiments. Upon House approval of HB 63 (the cannabis decriminalization bill), Patrick declared the bill “dead” on his Twitter feed. The Texas Tribune reported at the beginning of this session that Patrick could be the roadblock that halts cannabis reform and that positions still appears true. The lieutenant governor is “strongly opposed to weakening any laws against marijuana [and] remains wary of the various medicinal use proposals that could become a vehicle for expanding access to this drug,” Patrick said through a spokesperson in March. Following his tweet, an advisor told the Tribune Patrick’s opposition stance has not changed.
Criminal Justice Chair @Whitmire_John is right that #HB 63 is dead in the @Texas Senate. I join with those House Republicans who oppose this step toward legalization of marijuana.
The Compassionate Use Act in 2015 legalized the production and sale of low-THC cannabis oil for patients suffering from intractable epilepsy. Lawmakers in the House approved two different measures that would expand this program this month.
The first, HB 1365, is more wide-ranging and, as a result, supported by cannabis activists in the state. This measure, backed by Rep. Eddie Lucio III, would allow patients with an extensive list of ailments—including PTSD, cancer, multiple sclerosis, autism, intractable pain, severe nausea, and more—to receive cannabis oil. The bill would also establish a 12-member “cannabis therapeutic research program” that would “develop guidelines for administering medical marijuana, quality control for purity and labeling and best practices for cultivation,” according to the Dallas News.
But the other bill, HB 3703, is far more limiting in its expansion. Authored by Rep. Stephanie Klick, who’s also responsible for the original Compassionate Use Act bill, this measure would only include patients with all forms of epilepsy, MS, and unremitting muscle spasms. Klick told reporters last week she’s “very optimistic” her bill will gain traction in the Senate.
The legislative session ends May 27, so time is running out on cannabis reform in Texas. This is a showdown between the will of the people—only 16% of Texans opposed marijuana decriminalization in a 2018 poll—vs. a powerful political bully in Patrick. Should he choose, he can throw his weight around by blocking any substantial hearings around these bills in the Senate, effectively denying their passage. But maybe Patrick will be too occupied with his numerous FOX News appearances and forget about all this cannabis reform nonsense. Those cannabis activists who remain optimistic in Texas can only hope.
Introducing Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. It’s the name Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have given to their newborn. Talk about a name that was a dark horse in betting circles!
While the couple hasn’t given any details as to why they chose the name, “Harrison” means “son of Harry.” However, Harry’s real name is Henry Charles Albert David. Harry is the nickname he’s held since he was a kid.
Betting site Ladbroker, which previously assumed Meghan would have a girl, had Elizabeth in the top spot, because it was possible that Meghan would give birth on the Queen’s birthday. Albert and Arthur were the leading names for boy. (Archie isn’t too far off!)
Shortly after Meghan gave birth early Monday morning, Harry told reporters that he and Meghan were still deciding upon names. “Mother and baby are doing incredibly well. It’s been the most amazing experience I could every possibly imagine,” he said.
Baby Sussex takes Prince Andrew’s place as seventh in line for the throne. But he’s still behind his cousins Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. And, of course, his father.
Have you had a less-than-stellar performance review lately? Do you daydream, or are you making bad decisions?
It might not be about your job but about your sleep. And it’s not all your fault.
We each study different aspects of health and aging. A recent study we conducted found that poor sleep may inhibit judgment and lead to off-task and distracting thoughts at work. Making sleep a priority can improve cognitive performance at work.
Less sleep, less concentration
Sleep loss of about a quarter of an hour can affect work performance. fizkes/Shutterstock.com
Using eight-day diary data from a sample of 130 middle-aged workers in a U.S. IT firm, we found that a previous night’s sleep characteristics predicted next-day “cognitive interference,” or the experience of off-task and distracting thoughts.
To measure this, we used a 5-point frequency (0=never to 4=very often) and averaged responses on nine items that measure the experience of off-task and distracting thoughts than usual. For example, one of the questions was “How often did you have thoughts that kept jumping into your head today?”
On days following shorter and poorer quality sleep than usual, workers reported more cognitive interference. Across the participants, sleeping just 16 minutes less than usual was associated with one additional point on the cognitive interference scale the next day.
The participants also reported that after experiencing more cognitive interference on a particular day, they would go to bed earlier and wake up earlier than usual due to fatigue.
The link between previous night’s sleep and next-day cognitive interference was more apparent on workdays, less on non-workdays. Perhaps participants have more opportunities for cognitive interference and less opportunities for sleep during workdays. The results suggest that putting a larger emphasis on optimizing sleep health will result in more effective work performance.
From this study’s results, we deduce that shortened sleep may reduce work productivity. Previous lab-based experimental studies have shown that sleep deprivation, such as restricting sleep duration to four or five hours has negative effects on performance in cognitive tests.
However, there has been a lack of observational studies examining the relationship between sleep and cognitive functioning in participants’ own daily lives. Our study adds empirical evidence that poorer sleep the night before work will result in slower mental activity, delayed decision-making and potentially an increase in mistakes.
Less sleep, more stress
In previous collaborative work, I (Soomi Lee) also found that poor sleep can lead to experiencing more stressors and conflict the following day. On days following shorter and poorer quality sleep than usual, participants reported higher work-to-family conflict than usual. And on days following shorter sleep and lower quality sleep than usual, participants reported less time for themselves to exercise, and also less time for their children.
Data for both studies are from a larger study called the Work, Family & Health Study, which was designed to examine multi-site companies within the information technology and the nursing home sectors.
The two studies used a sample of IT workers, which represents a higher-income, professional-level workforce. Workers in this occupational sector tend to work long hours and experience a permeable boundary between work and personal life. Overtime work, frequent phone calls after work hours, late work-related emails, and early bird meetings, such as 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. meetings, may disrupt workers’ sleep.
The findings show that workers’ sleep can impact job performance in multiple ways, including decision making and intrusive thoughts. Sleep complaints are prevalent in the adult population, especially among workers. About 40 percent of U.S. workers report insomnia symptoms. These symptoms can impair middle-aged workers’ daily functioning in multiple ways. Thus, paying attention to sleep health appears important even for successful working life.
Along the same lines, employers also need to make efforts to promote or at least not systematically disrupt their employees’ sleep; good sleep may promote work productivity and make a less stressful workplace.
Some sleep tips
Organizations can help workers improve their sleep by not expecting them to answer emails and phone calls after hours. Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com
To prioritize sleep, individuals and organizations need to act. Organizations could create and support a culture that minimizes any sleep-disruptive activities from work, such as work-related phone calls during non-work hours, any sense of obligation to respond to after hours emails, and early bird meetings.
Individual employees could also establish good sleep routines and follow them every day. For example, they need to shut off phones and ignore emails after a certain hour, after 9 p.m. for example, in order to turn on a relaxed mode before bedtime and get at least seven hours of sleep.
Regular exercise can also be beneficial to have good quality sleep. A challenge is that most workers feel they have too much to do and no time for sleep and exercise. However, they need to cut off the vicious cycle between poor sleep and poor performance. When sleep is stolen on a day-to-day basis, there will be a high cost to pay in terms of health in later life, and perhaps productivity tomorrow.
According to People, days before the birth of their first child, Meg and Harry weren’t anxious: “They weren’t anxious at all,” says Meghan’s friend and wedding makeup artist Daniel Martin, who visited the couple’s Frogmore Cottage home in the weeks ahead of their new son’s May 6 birth. “They were hanging out in their backyard, cooking, just going about their daily lives. They’re both very calming personalities. There was no pressure. They were just like, ‘The baby will come when it’s ready.’ ”
They want more kids: “They definitely want to,” a source says. “Meghan has talked about having one more.”
They love Frogmore Cottage: “There’s so much space for them to be able to take walks with the baby and their dogs and not feel like they are being preyed upon — that was the big thing. Meghan’s so happy there compared to Kensington Palace. It’s like night and day.”
Plenty of stars like Lady Gaga and Janelle Monáe turned heads at Monday night’s (May 6) 2019 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala’s red carpet, but members of the Rihanna Navy were disappointed that the pop titan didn’t make an appearance at the annual affair, which was all about “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” To keep fans at bay, she took to social media to sound off on the affair.
Not only did the 31-year-old show some love to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, by deeming her the “best dressed” of the night, but she also shared a screenshot of a fan’s tweet via her Instagram Story. “Rihanna at home playing with that fu**in makeup,” @idkmackk wrote on the social media platform, to which Rih decided to screenshot and place it alongside a photo of her makeup on a counter. Good move, Rih!
Learning something new keeps the mind fresh and active…and combats boredom. Here are so ideas.
There are days when you don’t want to fill up your free time with friends, movies or books. Although these experiences are all great and worthy of their own time, some days your brain just isn’t in the right state for them. So bored? Here are 5 hobbies you can learn online.
Hobbies are brought up a lot when it comes to healthy habits and “self care”. They provide a learning experience that’s good for you and can make you more interesting to be around. Hobbies can evolve into passions that provide fun and fulfillment, and that can play a significant role in your life.
Embroidery is quite simple if you start with the basics and buy the appropriate kit, which is available on Amazon with a million different patterns. There are also tons of Youtube tutorials online that can help a lot if you’re more of a visual learner.
Plant care
Who doesn’t dream of keeping a plant alive for more than a week? Although this task seems impossible to accomplish, at least on a personal level, there are actually people who are really great at tending to their plants. Unlike kids or pets, plants are cheap and not too demanding. You can fulfill your nurturing side and still having free time to do other things. Like reading these useful tips on plant care.
Juggling
Sure, juggling has no actual purpose, but it could make for an interesting party trick if you’re not too smug about it. There are hundreds of YouTube tutorials available that teach you how to juggle with three balls, two balls and more. Go crazy.
This is one of those skills that is super boring but that will beef up your resume and leave you with a skill that’s helpful for a wide variety of tasks that aren’t limited to the creative. Adobe offers its own tutorials, but if you prefer a more conversational tone and less structure you can always check out what YouTubers have to say.
Calligraphy, or that one skill you seriously regret ignoring when you were in elementary school, is experiencing a big comeback. There are dozens of Instagram accounts dedicated to the practice, which, let’s be honest, is satisfying just to look at. If you’re someone who likes to write things by hand or is interested in bullet journals, calligraphy is a worthy skill to pursue.
The inclusion of cameras on phones has altered a lot of things, mostly the pervasiveness of selfies and nudes. It’s important for everyone to be informed, especially if they’re young and susceptible to making rash decisions.
A survey from Cosmopolitan, whose readership has a median age age of 21, reported that 89% of them had taken a nude at some point in their lives. This information was gathered in 2014, when smartphones had way worse cameras and less options for making yourself look as good as possible. It’s safe to assume that nudes are not going anywhere and that people are taking even more of them now.
Here’s what you can do in order to ensure that you’re as safe as you can be when sending a nude.
Author Nona Willis Aronowitz suggests getting to know your body and your naked angles, which are totally different than your clothed angles. This practice will allow you to get some confidence and to enjoy yourself in a way that’s completely risk free.
No, you don’t have to print your nudes and carry them around in a bag. Just show them to the person you intend to show them to…in person. Like, while you’re actually together, ensuring that the photo still stays in your phone and, more importantly, in your control. Although slightly unorthodox, this is also a pretty sexy activity, especially if you have some really good nudes.
If someone’s pressuring you to send them a nude, don’t do it. Sharing nudes with people is sexy when it feels safe and when there’s trust. Before you hit send make sure that the person you shared the photo with would never share it with someone else, even if you break up with them and they’re super depressed.
Even someone you trust can do bad things. It’s very important to know that whenever you send a nude, the photo is no longer under your control. The recipient now holds all the cards, which means they can share it with other people. It’s also extremely important that you know the laws of the state where you live. If you’re underage, sharing a nude could result in much more trouble than the betrayal of someone sharing your naked pics.
While Jesse Williams might be best known as Dr. Jackson Avery on the long-running series Grey’s Anatomy, he’s also become an active social justice activist over the past several years. That angle of social justice is how he viewed the opportunity to work with Spike Jonze on MedMen’s “The New Normal” advertisement, which documents the history of cannabis in America.
During a recent appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Williams expanded about some of the themes found in the video and he felt compelled to join the project.
“It’s an important issue. I didn’t come to it from cannabis as the center, that wasn’t my bag,” he said. “But it’s social justice and it’s something we need to decriminalize because we aren’t adjudicating it fairly. We’re not enforcing these laws fairly.”
Williams cited how the War on Drugs disproportionately affects communities of color. Just in New York City alone, 89% of marijuana arrests in 2018 were either Black or Hispanic persons while white people made up just 7% of those arrests. This is a stark contrast, as Williams noted, when so many in the cannabis industry are getting so rich so quick.
“What is the story of cannabis in this country truly? Because it certainly it isn’t a bunch of people in Colorado and California discovering it and getting rich,” Williams said. “It’s not the gold rush as in you just discovered gold and now you’re selling it. Marijuana’s been around forever.
“We used to force Africans to grow it on plantations, including the first president, George Washington, he added. “And now there’s thousands of people locked up in cages for having it in their pocket. So how did we get there?”
You can watch the full interview with Williams above.
Is there really a difference? When to use the terms marijuana, cannabis, and hemp. Everyone seems to be using the terms “cannabis” and “marijuana” interchangeably. And the word “hemp” is also rising in popularity. But does it matter which term you use?
According to Rod Kight, international hemp and cannabis business law attorney, it’s important to know the difference, especially if you’re talking in legal terms. But either way, it’s a good lesson for all of us.
Rod says marijuana is the most important term to get right because it has legal significance. It’s the term used in the Controlled Substances Acts and applies to the cannabis sativa plant with more than .3% Delta 9 THC. Hemp is the cannabis sativa plant that contains no more than .3% Delta 9 THC.
Technically known as Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, Delta-9 THC is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis that provides the high.
Here’s your 60 second primer on why this all matters:
How did the name of marijuana come about? One theory holds that Chinese immigrants to western Mexico lent the plant its name; a theoretical combination of syllables that could plausibly have referred to the plant in Chinese (ma ren hua) might have just become Spanishized into marijuana.
Marijuana is referred to by various nicknames, with weed and pot being the most common. Aside from those two names, there are multiple other slang terms that it goes by, such as Mary Jane, bud, ganga, reefer, chronic, and herb.
If a joint has both tobacco and marijuana in it, it is called a spliff. At the tip of a joint may be what’s called a roach. The term originated in England where joints are rolled with tobacco to facilitate the burn. Tobacco leaks tar. Hence, roaches were small pieces of cardboard, rolled and placed into the mouthpiece of the joint. These adaptations are referred to as filters. You might hear the term roach clip which describes the metal holder that pinches a joint.
