The Daily Valet. - 6/27/23, Tuesday

✔️ This Could Be an Interesting Update

Tuesday, June 27th Edition

By Cory Ohlendorf, Valet. Editor

Anyone micro-dosing while reading this?

Today’s Big Story

FDA Open to Psychedelic Drug Trials

The walls of psychedelic prohibition are crumbling. But What comes next?

Are we coming around to psychedelics? Am I high or are these drugs—once a counterculture phenomenon and then a favorite of bio-hacking tech bros—ready for primetime? Perhaps. Because for the first time ever, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued guidance for clinical trials of psychedelic substances like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA.That means that magic mushrooms could go mainstream. After all the necessary steps, of course. But this could be great news for the researchers looking into psychedelic treatments for a variety of conditions, including PTSD, depression and anxiety.These drugs have shown promise for treating a range of addictions and mental health disorders. Of course, this is not a quick process. The FDA is seeking comments from industry, investigators and the public by Aug. 23, after which the agency will begin work on a final version of the guidance.“People want to enter the market without having to do the experimentation and the safety and efficacy analysis,” said Kimberly Chew, an attorney at Husch Blackwell focused on psychedelics and emerging therapies. Most don't want to go through the FDA approval process because it's expensive, resource intensive and “they just want their business to thrive,” she added.So far, Oregon and Colorado are the only states to have decriminalized the supervised use of psychedelics, though neither has endorsed it as a mental health treatment. A recent analysis estimated that most states will legalize psychedelics by 2037. Currently, 25 states are already considering legislation—and most bills have been introduced in the past two years. So it's clear the tides are turning.

Dig Deeper:

The largest psychedelic conference, where more than 11,000 scientists, artists and investors recently gathered was ... surprisingly sane.

Is Student Debt Relief Coming?

The fate of millions of student-loan borrowers is set to be decided this week

It's a big week for the Supreme Court. They've left some of this term's biggest decisions for last. The justices will hand down their next round of opinions starting today, deciding the fate of millions of Americans with federal student loans, (along with a 40-year precedent of race-conscious college admissions processes, how federal elections are run and LGBTQ+ rights).That means borrowers banking on President Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt will likely soon find out whether they will resume payments this fall with a reduction to their balances—or if they'll be thrown back into repayment without any relief.And regardless of the decision, the Education Department has confirmed that student-loan payments will resume in October, with interest beginning to accrue again on borrowers' balances in September. It's been more than three years since millions of borrowers have had to make payments on their loans. As Axios points out, servicers may have changed in that time and portal logins may have been forgotten. Experts warn of a messy return to debt repayment for the millions of Americans who collectively owe more than $1 trillion in student loans. “From the student perspective, it's going to be chaotic,” one fellow from Brookings said. “I think there's gonna be a lot of bounced checks.”

Meanwhile:

Some activist groups want President Biden to use a 1965 law to cancel student debt if his plan is stuck down.

An Olympics Without Drug Testing?

An Australian businessman plans the “Enhanced Games” Where doping is allowed

Aaron D'Souza—the Australia-born, London-based businessman who you might remember led billionaire Peter Thiel's litigation against Gawker Media—believes that if he builds it they will come. Not ghostly baseball players but athletes of another sort. Those who compete with a chemically-enhanced edge.His plan is to launch the Enhanced Games, a sort of Olympics without drug testing, and “obliterate all the world records.” It apparently will kick off in December next year, with two high-profile Australian athletes among those expressing interest. “We all know that the use of performance enhancements in sports is an open secret,” D'Souza said in a statement. “The safest way to level the playing field is to allow athletes to openly use science to achieve their full potential.”It's an interesting argument, but critics already are lining up to condemn the idea. Anna Meares, an Olympic gold medalist who will serve as Australia's Olympic chef de mission for the Games in Paris in 2024, certainly isn't buying what D'Souza is selling. “It's a joke, to be honest,” she told The Guardian. “Unfair, unsafe — I just don't think this is the right way to go about sport.”

Dig Deeper:

The Enhanced Games preaches the use of science, with the goals to: “Break world records, encourage enhancements and embrace capitalism.”

Dolphins Are Even More Like Humans

They use ‘baby talk’ with their calves, a first among non-human species

Did you know that dolphins have some of the most elaborate acoustic abilities in the animal kingdom? They make a variety of sounds including whistles, clicks, squeaks, moans, barks and yelps. And while you might've already known that they can learn, play and socialize just like humans, scientists just found out they do something else like us: Talk in baby talk.You know how, almost instinctively, you change your voice when speaking to a small child or infant? A study published Monday found that female bottlenose dolphins essentially do the same. Researchers recorded the signature whistles of nearly two dozen mother dolphins in Florida, when accompanied by their young offspring and when swimming alone or with other adults. And the mommas change their tone when addressing their calves.“We're not changing the words that we're saying, we're changing the way that we say them,” one marine biologist told National Geographic. But obtaining this data was no simple feat—it took three decades to compile and analyze the sounds. As for why we (and dolphins) use baby talk ... no one is certain, but scientists believe it may help offspring learn to pronounce novel sounds.

FYI:

There are 36 species of marine dolphins, living in nearly all aquatic environments, from oceans to freshwater.

In Other News

Kamala Harris Hits Record Low for VP Favorability

NBC News says it's the lowest for a vice president in the history of its poll.

A Jan. 6 Defendant, Representing Himself, Questions Son Who Turned Him Into the FBI

Georgia Could Lose Up to 95% of Its Peaches Due to Wild Weather Swings

Paris’s Only Skyscraper Turns 50 … And the French Still Hate It

Have you heard about ...

The ‘Superman Legacy’ screen tests

This surprising Harvard twist

BMW’s supercharged hybrid wagon

The Long Read

What if travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves ... instead of the opposite?

Tourism is marked by its locomotive character. ‘I went to France.’ O.K., but what did you do there? ‘I went to the Louvre.’ O.K., but what did you do there? ‘I went to see the Mona Lisa.’ That is, before quickly moving on: apparently, many people spend just fifteen seconds looking at the Mona Lisa. It’s locomotion all the way down.”

- By Agnes Callard

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