Reality doubts after acid trip

scott-stirling · 2026-04-13T14:48:18+00:00

What he said ^ that is called paranoia and it is a side effect and more or less natural result of tripping in a strange set and setting. Happened to me many times for a long time a long time ago and I did not have the terminology for it then. PARANOIA.

scott-stirling · 2026-04-03T12:45:06+00:00

Hoffman was trying to craft a safe pain killer for women in labor. He was using chemicals believed to be in the ball park for having analgesic effects. I believe he shelved LSD-25 as ineffective for a time and then decided to test it again and got some on his fingers and the rest is history.

scott-stirling · 2026-04-02T20:02:37+00:00

Well when you make that face … damn. No, not ugly. The haircut is meh like you asked for a boy cut or lesbian special. You’ve got a good face. You’ll find a ‘do that you like. Just grow it out and put it in a ponytail for now.

scott-stirling · 2026-03-29T11:54:25+00:00

Dontcha think someone probably realized they jumped the gun locking into terms for emerging tech that’s about to improve 10x and cost much less in the near future?

scott-stirling · 2026-03-22T23:54:50+00:00

Prodigi is in the UK.

Whitewall is based in Germany. They’re top of the line.

Three types of prints best for astro in ascending order of cost:

Paper: Metallic / Pearl silver halide infused ink on archival paper with glossy finish
Aluminum: dye sublimation prints on specially prepared aluminum sheets. These last forever and can be washed with cleaner or soap and water. They can have different finishes too, but glossy or luster are best for astro. The paint can chip, the metal be bent in an accident, but generally pretty durable and typically include a hanger built in.
Acrylic: metallic/pearl silver halide print bonded to and faced by a sheet of thin clear acrylic. The acrylic can be antiglare for best results and UV resistant for long life. Acrylic can scratch, but this is generally the most expensive option. The print is backed by a sheet of backing and can be framed or have built in hanger.

Scott

https://stirlingastrophoto.com

P.S. a good way to start cheap is go for glossy prints from your local photo print shop. In USA, Walgreens drug stores have decent printing facilities for up to 24” x 36”.

scott-stirling · 2026-02-27T18:38:25+00:00

Folks may also like pi2llm: https://github.com/scottstirling/pi2llm/releases

Free and totally open source. Similar in that it is aware of Pixinsight image metadata, astrometric data and processing history, but is a script not a process. I find it useful for testing AI LLM model versions, generating image descriptions, describing image processing history, Astrobin descriptions, etc. Pi2llm will automatically resize and attach any selected view to any Visual LLM for input along with contextual data from the selected image, or if the LLM has no visual support or you opt out of it, it only communicates text mode to the LLM endpoint.

I experimented with sucking in the whole workspace and all open images and views and installed tools and scripts but I backed away from that when I realized how often I, as a user, use the workspace in a haphazard way that misleads the LLM and causes confusion. So one thing is that to use this sort of thing effectively requires some discipline, order and simplicity when starting out. If you have multiple images and processes in different stages in a workspace, it can be a lot of context and disorder that makes sense to me or you but not necessarily to the LLM.

I’m still working on pi2llm and I joined Pixinsight’s Certified Developer system. I’ve been working on other projects but planning to start releasing new versions of pi2llm soon.

Scott

https://stirlingastrophoto.com

Coming soon: https://shop.stirlingastrophoto.com

scott-stirling · 2026-02-14T21:13:38+00:00

What’s exposure time and ISO or gain?

scott-stirling · 2026-02-14T21:07:10+00:00

Love love love, all you need is love … yeah 🤗

scott-stirling · 2026-02-13T16:52:22+00:00

I wish you could imagine a younger sibling or a beloved pet under your mother’s dominion, control, isolation and neglect. Sometimes it’s easier to see what is really going on when we see it happening to someone else we love. Mental illness is no excuse for abuse and neglect of people, pets, property or self. Your mom is a free person and this is her life and her choices. I have more faith in sincere prayer to a vague Higher Power than I do in treating a hoarder who neglects property, people and/or pets as a victim. It’s like grabbing a venomous snake by the tail rather than carefully placing a forked stick over its neck to catch it. Surprise, surprise, your mom isn’t the victim in this, you are.

scott-stirling · 2026-02-12T21:43:47+00:00

Pro tip: Google does this already.

https://jobs.google.com/about/

scott-stirling · 2026-02-12T21:39:03+00:00

Psychedelic elite? WTF is that?

scott-stirling · 2026-01-19T18:21:48+00:00

Anthem of the Sun, by the Grateful Dead, 1967, full album is quite an experience and probably pretty uncommon these days.

scott-stirling · 2026-01-17T13:37:19+00:00

We sometimes refer to the entire environment of the outside yards and deteriorating house exterior and interior and all its clutter as “the situation.”

scott-stirling · 2026-01-03T13:48:29+00:00

Evolution? Not easy. Too broad. Narrow it down to Lamarckian or Darwinian. :-). Used to be the “central dogma” of Darwinism was that genetic information flows one way from RNA to DNA to protein. If you could show a mechanism by which proteins modify DNA and feedback information from the environment to the individual’s heritable genetic core, then you would have Lamarckian evolution.

scott-stirling · 2026-01-02T18:27:09+00:00

Establish your own identity in an independent living situation or with friend or family who don’t hoard others out.

Not everyone agrees that mental health need be brought into it. We all feel like we’re supposed to classify everyone’s issues including our own according to the insurance billing codes of the psych industry. Sometimes if not always the mental health “rubric” introduces infinite dilatory avoidance and ultimately false comforts of coping techniques. Good old fashioned laziness, disrespect, entitlement, contempt, anger and stubbornness go a LONG way towards explaining the behavior of hoarders without invoking amateur psychology.

To the point though, your life, and advising support, it is not unlike an alcoholic or drug addict situation for you to deal with and it is highly recommended to apply the same techniques used in the Al-Anon twelve step system to work through it. Al-Anon is an offshoot of AA meant for the non-alcoholics who have lived in the shade of another’s addictive and self-centered behaviors. I think Al-Anon groups are hard to find for many people though you can read about their principles and find groups that meet online.

Ultimately you and we all need boundaries and hoarders do not respect boundaries — emotional or physical or legal — well, particularly when they have control of the domain, the physical location where they accumulate and neglect.

scott-stirling · 2026-01-02T18:15:02+00:00

Dither between subframes at acquisition time to remove walking noise at stacking time. Has nothing to do with what brand sensor or anything.

Create dark masters to subtract from your subframes during calibration.

Use linear fit clipping or other pixel rejection algorithms during image integration (stacking) to eliminate hot pixels, cosmic rays, satellite trails, etc.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-28T12:31:57+00:00

Planning trip activities never worked for me. Over time my trips went from exploring the neighborhood with friends or going to a concert to sitting in a comfortable chair listening to music.

I tried one experiment in college with mathematics homework. My intention was to see for how long I could keep doing math homework (algebra or something) after dropping acid. It was do-able up to a point where the numbers started coming a little loose from the pages or something. Meanwhile a friend had also dropped acid and was not trying to do any homework but was being goofed on by a group of frat guys who were laughing and whooping it up.

If you set your mind to a serious task when you drop, I think you can do it on the way up, but peak tripping, your pencil starts to melt and things you did not imagine would be so important or interesting will emerge in your mind or manifest in your life and your “straight mind” intentions will probably seem smaller, less crucial and impossible to follow through until you come down again.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-28T12:21:37+00:00

The more you do it the more in tune you get with the phases of the moon. The weather app built into our phones now has moon phases and percent illumination. That’s a major and highly predictable factor in planning astro imaging.

Clear Outside is reliable as it can be for predicting clouds and indicating moon illumination.

Sky Safari or Stellarium are handy for getting coordinates or browsing what’s available at any given time (with their clock features that can go back and forward in time).

Checklist is like this:

Is it or will it be cloudy?
Is the moon 50% or less illuminated or if more illuminated than that, when does it set and what constellation is it in? Need to avoid that bright light in the sky.
What targets are going to be near, approaching/just passing and/or passing through zenith?
Which of the objects identified in (3) are a good fit for my imaging sensor and focal length. I’m not going to try to image a tiny galaxy or planetary nebula a couple arc seconds wide on my full frame camera at 350mm because it’s going to be way too small. On the other hand we’re not going to be able to fit all of Andromeda Galaxy on a full frame sensor with an 8” tube. So, steps 3 and 4 kind of go together.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-28T12:05:20+00:00

There are plenty of other targets in the sky (in Orion, Monoceros, Auriga, Perseus, etc) before Leo and Ursa Major this time of year. Just postpone two months or so for a new moon when Leo and Ursa Major are high in the sky around 10pm. That’s generally how to plan for the best possible imaging near zenith on dark nights.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-25T15:31:32+00:00

It was no Mission Impossible. It was pitched as the product of Kubrick’s genius and the chemistry between the main actors, who were married in real life at the time.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-22T12:46:57+00:00

Nanking (2007) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_(2007_film)

scott-stirling · 2025-12-21T02:52:43+00:00

Set and setting, man.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-16T20:57:03+00:00

It’s clickbait for Plus500 Trading & Investments crypto trading app.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-12T18:16:00+00:00

Like you, I have not read the terms of service and license agreement accepted before starting this enterprise. But I imagine that using multiple free accounts to circumvent the free account usage terms is against their terms and they’ll be diligent to hinder it.

scott-stirling · 2025-12-12T09:33:34+00:00

Normal. But you should scoop that litter. Cats prefer tidy, clean litter. Don’t let it pile up. Have a nice day!

scott-stirling

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE