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Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 11th, 2023
  • dai@lemmy.worldtoNot The Onion@lemmy.world•Former Chick-fil-A employee charged in $80,000 mac-and-cheese schemeEnglish
    7·
    12 days ago

    www.bbc.com

    Former Chick-fil-A employee charged in $80,000 mac-and-cheese scheme

    Harry Sekulich

    2 - 3 minutes

    Grapevine Police Department/ Facebook CCTV shows a man tapping at a touch-screen register wearing a brown puffer vest, backward baseball cap and blue jeans.Grapevine Police Department/ Facebook

    CCTV shows the accused at a touch-screen register where he allegedly rang up hundreds of portions of mac-and-cheese.

    Texas police have charged a former Chick-fil-A employee for allegedly defrauding the fast food company of the cost of 800 trays of mac-and-cheese.

    The Grapevine Police Department alleges that the employee had been fired a month earlier, but returned to a branch of the fast food chain and made his way behind the counter, where he rang up the catering-sized portions of the rich pasta dish.

    They say he then refunded the cost of the order – $80,000 (£58,800) – to his personal credit cards.

    Police tried to arrest him multiple times before succeeding on 17 April, the department said in a social media statement. He was charged with property theft, money laundering and evading arrest.

    Getty Images Chick-fil-A restaurant logo seen in Houston, Texas.Getty Images

    US media named the suspect as 23-year-old Keyshun Jones. Records show he is currently in custody at Green Bay prison in Forth Worth, Texas. The New York Times reported that Jones’s lawyer declined to comment.

    The Chick-fil-A catering menu lists the cost of a large tray of its mac-and-cheese at around $100 depending on location. The number of calories in the baked macaroni dish, which features three types of cheese, is almost 10,000 (40,000 kilojoules).

    The Chick-fil-A store shared surveillance footage appearing to show the sacked worker returning to the store and using a register behind the service counter.

    CCTV footage shows the man wearing a brown puffer vest, blue jeans and backwards white cap, not the chain’s branded red polo uniform.

    It is alleged he used the restaurant’s point-of-sale system to issue unauthorised refunds to his personal accounts. It is unclear why he was fired before the incident.

    He was eventually found and arrested following a joint operation of the Texas attorney general’s Fugitive Task Force and the Fort Worth Police Department.

    The BBC has contacted Chick-fil-A’s media office for comment.

  • dai@lemmy.worldtoMemes@sopuli.xyz•Servers go Brrrrrr
    1·
    23 days ago

    Man what are you paying per kwh? I’m averaging ~$0.21 AUD using a supplier who offers a variable market wholesale price.

    I’d thought my rack was a bit of a hog with a z390 9900k and erying es system, but checking my current usage it’s vibing at 180kwh~

    At 9:20 pm my rack has set me back $0.80 for the day (excluding misc connection fees and so forth). Most of my daily use would be in heating / cooling with two split systems & the wife WFH.

  • dai@lemmy.worldtoProgrammer Humor@programming.dev•tech never works for long
    1·
    23 days ago

    Yeah I’m stuck between those two options however it’s for much later down the road in my case. House needs a renovation but finances don’t allow just yet.

    I have a mix of TP Link wifi globes, IKEA ZigBee and Hue Zigbee throughout the house. Zigbee are controlled by a SLZB 06 and ZHA / MQTT. By far the Hue are the best I’ve tested and have been in service for around 10 years.

  • dai@lemmy.worldtoNot The Onion@lemmy.world•Tobacco plant altered to produce five psychedelic drugsEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    Berman et al., Sci. Adv. 12, eaeb3034 (2026) 1 April 2026

    S c i e n c e A d v

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    P L A N T S C I E N C E S

    Complete biosynthesis of psychedelic tryptamines from

    three kingdoms in plants

    Paula Berman1,2

    *†, Janka Höfer 1

    †, Herschel Mehlman1

    , Efrat Almekias-Siegl1

    , Olga Khersonsky 3

    ,

    Younghui Dong 4

    ‡, Uwe Heinig4

    , Liron Sulimani5

    , Let Kho Hao1,2

    , Shahar Cohen2

    , Yoav Peleg4

    ,

    Sagit Meir1

    , Ilana Rogachev 1

    , David Meiri5

    , Sarel J. Fleishman3

    , Asaph Aharoni1

    *

    Psychedelic indolethylamines with therapeutic potential are naturally produced in plants, fungi, and animals.

    Here, we elucidated the complete N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) biosynthetic pathway in hallucinogenic plant

    species traditionally used in shamanic rituals for spiritual healing. Leveraging the similarities in their chemical

    structures, we reconstructed in one plant assay the full biosynthetic pathways of five renowned natural psyche-

    delics; psilocin and psilocybin found in mushrooms, DMT from plants, and bufotenin and 5-methoxy-DMT secret-

    ed by the Sonoran Desert toad. We further engineered halogenated analogs of these molecules, which do not

    naturally occur in plants and exhibit prospective therapeutic potential for psychiatric conditions. Blending cata-

    lytic functions across the tree of life, coupled with metabolic engineering guided by rational protein design of

    mutant enzymes, enabled substantially more efficient in planta production of the indolethylamine components.

    This work establishes a versatile platform for concurrent biosynthesis and diversification of psychoactive indole-

    thylamines, paving the way for their production in plants.

    INTRODUCTION

    For thousands of years, psychedelic substances have been used by

    indigenous cultures as entheogens in rituals intended to induce al-

    tered states of consciousness for spiritual and therapeutic purposes.

    Psilocybin-containing mushrooms were central to ancient Aztec

    ceremonies (1), while N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the pri-

    mary psychoactive component of ayahuasca, has long been used

    in traditional Amazonian rituals. This ceremonial brew combines

    Psychotria viridis (a natural source of DMT) with Banisteriopsis caapi,

    which provides β-carboline monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibi-

    tors that render DMT orally active (1, 2). Similarly, 5-methoxy-N,N-

    dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), found in the secretion of

    the Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius) and in several plant spe-

    cies, is thought to have been used ceremonially by indigenous

    groups in northern Mexico (3). 5-MeO-DMT has been described

    as the most potent DMT analog, being about 4- to 10-fold more po-

    tent than DMT in humans and is known to induce psychedelic ex-

    periences that are distinct from those of DMT (4). Knowledge of

    the traditional use of these molecules has fueled contemporary

    therapeutic interest in psychedelics as treatments for neuropsychiat-

    ric conditions.

    Recent studies have shown that classical indolethylamine psy-

    chedelics promote neuroplasticity and modulate serotonergic cir-

    cuits, primarily through 5-HT 2A receptor activation (5–7). These

    compounds have demonstrated therapeutic potential for depression,

    anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and addiction (5–8), with psi-

    locybin receiving Food and Drug Administration Breakthrough

    Therapy designation for major depressive disorder in 2019 (6, 7).

    Although widely considered hallucinogenic, psilocybin itself func-

    tions as a prodrug, undergoing enzymatic dephosphorylation in the

    digestive tract and liver to produce psilocin, the active compound

    responsible for its psychoactive effects. DMT is produced by a broad

    range of plant species and, in low abundance, by certain animals (2).

    When administered via smoking or intravenous injection, it pro-

    duces rapid and intense psychoactive effects that typically peak with-

    in 5 min and subside within 30 min, due to rapid metabolism by

    MAO enzymes in the liver. Coadministration with MAO inhibitors

    can extend the half-life of DMT in vivo (2). The traditional use of

    ayahuasca exemplifies how combining compounds from different

    sources can enable oral activity; however, such combinations require

    carefully balanced dosing to mitigate adverse effects associated with

    MAO inhibition (9).

    The expanding clinical interest in psychedelics as therapeutics

    has sparked the need for scalable and versatile production platforms

    and structural diversification (10, 11). Traditionally, the supply of

    psychedelics relies on natural producers, mainly plants, fungi, and

    the Sonoran Desert toad. Harvesting these organisms for their psy-

    choactive compounds raises ecological and ethical concerns, being

    increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overexploitation (12).

    While synthetic routes for these compounds are available and, in

    some cases, relatively straightforward, they still require compound-

    specific reactants, can lead to unwanted intermediates and prod-

    ucts, and require several processing steps (2, 13, 14). Biocatalys

  • dai@lemmy.worldtoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.world•Plastic hinges on modern headphonesEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    Yeah it’s a pain to install however. One of our dogs had a chomp on the wife’s set, took me quite sometime to disasemble the headphones just to install it.

    Honestly if you can get something to wrap over / stitch over the top go that route. The XM4 are fiddily as fuck to tear down just to replace the headband.

    Oh those are a clip on version. FML might have to get that to replace the black band on the grey set of headphones.