So, where to begin… let’s see… we start with the POWER9 at home on my desk, and me looking a wreck in the morning…

Where is this wonderful place that brings me so much joy? Hurricane Electric of course.

For Silicon Valley datacenter nerds, Hurricane Electric’s Fremont and San Jose facilities are the spiritual home of budget-friendly colo: cabinet and partial-cabinet plans with same-day turn-up, straightforward BGP, and native v6 on a backbone that’s been aggressively peering since the early 2000s, making it a historically significant and still notably affordable place to park gear in the Bay Area.

And as such… it’s where most of my gear resides. What was once a HomeLab at home has become a situation of _“let’s move everything into the colo and tell PG$E to suck it on their $300-600/month apartment electric bills (which is physically impossible, they’re a proven CA Governor sponsored monopoly).

Tools and So Forth

How about a photo of my lovely Wera designed Datacenter tool bag? Yes! It’s rugged and strong and doesn’t distort with heavy items. Love it. At the top of the photo is whichever purse happened to be brought along that day; Kors or Burbs or Coach or whichever fit size requirements at the time.

Not shown: a squared-rasp-file occasionally required for “standardizing” the rail mounting holes in those old-ass blue racks. My right hand still has scars from years ago - before owning that rasp to fix the burrs.

Always Getting Injured, but that’s OK.

Now, about those old scars - there are surely new ones periodically. While getting ready for the colo, just standing at the sink with some sheers, cutting… cutting… and ohffs that’s my finger. Yep, it’s definitely deep! Apply pressure! Wrap it tight! Not too tight though… and what was at my disposal? Paper medical tape and clear plastic industrial packing tape.

FINE. It’s FINE. The bleeding mostly stopped, and off we go to the datacenter!

done cut my self real bad

Networking, Servers, Drives, DPUs, and all the other fun!

Ok, enough rambling. Here’s a photo gallery with annotated pics. Each rack has some major revisions to undergo, which requires planning and documentation updates and all the usual production readiness routines.

More Hardware - More ARM64!

Now you may wonder, where is all of my ARM64 equipment and the other clusters? Those are still in the 2x 25U racks at home – they’ll be migrated to the colo as well, once I convert them to use industrial Compact-PCI chassis blade mounts with integrated/redundant power and backplane. I bring you… the ADLINK cPCIS-2632R 3U Compact PCI chassis.

Industrial ADLINK cPCIS-2632R CompactPCI

SATA3… Really?

And we wrap up the day’s fun with… decisions on what to do with these SATA3 SSDs recovered from some old R420 systems… perhaps the LC922 boxes can use those + some 240GB Intel or Samsung boot drives. These days I never bother with SATA, only SAS or NVMe. HoHumBoringSataSoSlow.

A Tale of Two Labs - One is Real, The Other…

I love having my own hardware for my own labs. I love not having to rely on a corporation over-promising on lab resources for the architecture design process – real physical hardware which is absolutely required for “Proof of Concept Engineering”.

As a wise-one once related, not everything can be a Power Point Presentation. Engineers need physical hardware for validation workflows, otherwise it’s all just vaporware.

🙉 🙈 🙊

This process combines a form of silent meditation with neuropharmacology — reprocessing memories via old photos while blasting the prefrontal cortex with supra-physiological dopamine levels. The Blood-Brain-Barrier must be crossed, and it must be strictly timed and controlled, while ensuring sufficient “ripcord medication” is available to halt the process.

This is achieved via prescribed medication, nothing particularly fun unfortunately, applying a timed combination of precursor + releasing agent + receptor agonist + potentiators CYP450-3A4 and CYP450-2D6. Regardless of the prescribing aspect, the combination is finely tailored to my neuro-chemistry and has been adjusted over the course of years - it is not for broad consideration or recommendation. In varying ways over the past three years, these dopaminergic alterations have been extremely challenging to manage, process, adapt, adjust, and come to terms with in their entirety.

Neural reprogramming via dopamine therapy is exceedingly dangerous territory when not managed correctly, and is not to be considered any kind of fun or pleasurable. The risk-profile is extensive: deconstruction of self-identity, parasympathetic + autonomic nervous system malfunctions, chronic sleep deprivation, tremors, hallucinations, time-slippage, and the stripping away of sanity. The potential benefits are life changing, bordering on a form of salvation from neurological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

During this time the purpose is to reprogram the brain’s altered response-pathways, repairing damage from trauma and its hold on sensory processing and associative recall. Secondary improvements exist, which include taking an α1-adrenergic blocker after treatment (in this case a “non-selective inverse agonist”, named Prazosin), which settles down the autonomic system.

The Evolving Science of Memory Extinction

Prior to completing my seemingly never-ending research paper, here’s a synopsis on the technical aspects regarding “why this works” as a treatment for scenarios involving a Post-Traumatized Brain. That term is not as common as it should be; there are a lot of people who have experienced various forms of TBI - from mild to severe. The affliction is an often desperate condition which benefits fromPolytrauma Systems of Care.

Let me count the ways in which Traumatic Brain Injury is both caused by or by which manifests its existence to the external world of the unawares.

1. blunt-force impact trauma (me)
2. forms of cerebral ischemia (me)
3. environmental exposure leading to neurogenetic disorders
4. neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers
5. severe emotional trauma causing irreparable alteration to neurotransmitter homeostasis (me)
6. cerebral aneurysm, stroke, grand-mal seizures, cerebral edema, cerebral anoxia

How about some raw data analysis? Everyone loves the facts, hopefully?

The following screenshot is from a wonderful study about Sequential fear generalization and network connectivity in trauma exposed humans with and without psychopathology, which was discussed in a recent post from the Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester.

The full paper is fascinating, highly recommended reading. Moving on…

Dopamine Modulates Episodic-Memory Mapping

Why do we care so much about dopamine’s role in the brain? First, consider the neurological potential which arises as a result of boosting its metabolic precursor l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, aka L-DOPA. This is an amino acid derived from L-phenylalanine and L-tyrosine, which are effectively at the top of the brain’s food-chain, and when that is increased the brain has more fuel to synthesize dopamine for the therapeutic process. From the research links referenced below we have a list of essential findings and results.

Administration of L-DOPA - Key Findings

1. L-DOPA after extinction consolidates context-independent extinction memory and reduces fear relapse in healthy participants.
2. In women with assault-related PTSD, post-extinction L-DOPA reduced fear responding
3. Mis-timed dopaminergic enhancement can strengthen reconsolidation of the original memory; careful windowing is required.
4. PTSD shows broad impairments in learning and extinction; dopaminergic augmentation is a plausible lever but not standard of care.

Post-Administration Evaluation of Care and Metrics

Indeed. It’s important to keep track of the results and involved metrics for the medications, doses, timing, and end-stage emotional + physical impact assessment. Considerations are given to the following list as well.

1. Dose and windowing are critical to success and repeatability
2. Target the post-extinction consolidation window for Cmax/Tmax levels
3. Avoid dosing on “strong reactivation without extinction” to mitigate reconsolidation
4. Post-care medication tracking, timing values for adrenergic and sympathomimetic reduction curves, potential fear/threat response mitigators, CNS suppressant options

Research on PTSD Dopaminergic Therapy

Before engaging in any of this mad-scientist approach to problem solving, I read a lot of research on the topic. It’s an ongoing area of scientific inquiry.

While I do love science and all of its potential, I should clarify one thing: I am so goddamn tired of dealing with PTSD on an daily basis. The years of damage from sustained episodes of trauma have broken the programming structure for endogenous dopamine management, among other concerns. Not enough dopamine, you’ve got some big problems, as it is responsible for keeping us alive and healthy and happy and successful.

That endogenous situation is a crucial component for this form of therapy to be effective. It’s not just reprogramming memories, it’s concurrently back-filling the malformed neural network etchings, those disordered flows of catecholamine firing-flags (Fight or Flight Response programming: adrenaline, norepinephrine, as well as dopamine). It is a process of setting the roads straight, detangling, erasing, replacing.

• The precursor is the fuel which provides the base metabolic requirements
• The releasing agent boosts conversion of the precursor into the hormone
• The agonist tells the hormone’s receptors to hang on tight and for longer

At coordinated-curves, the result is substantially higher circulating dopamine in the brain — namely the PFC (prefrontal cortex) where memory consolidation and processing occurs. Peak reprogramming requires substantially higher circulating dopamine — plus an awareness for proper management of the effects and inevitable side effects. Caution must be exercised.

This is the kind of situation where the patient has a debilitating injury for over two decades — has tried effectively everything — and are now fully into the realm of experimental approaches to “just get it fixed, somehow, please”.

🧠 PTSD & Intrusive Memory Studies

Tap to expand. Search below.

1. Neuromodulation of Visual Cortex ▼

Hypothesis: Inhibiting early visual cortex during reconsolidation will blunt the affective “gain” on intrusive images.

Cause: Brief memory reactivation → 1 Hz rTMS over early visual cortex (human analogue-trauma paradigm).

Effect: Reduce visual-cortical contribution to intrusive image salience.

Observation: Emotional intensity of intrusions ↓; frequency & explicit memory unchanged.

rTMS Visual Cortex Reconsolidation

🔗 PMC8754386

2. Traumatic Stress Alters Visual Reactivity ▼

Hypothesis: Acute trauma perturbs basic visual-cortex impulse responses that track intrusion symptoms.

Cause: Recent trauma exposure; checkerboard visual stimulation during fMRI.

Effect: Visual sensory reactivity/connectivity shifts underpin later intrusive symptoms.

Observation: Visual-cortex reactivity associates with PTSD (especially intrusion) symptoms; altered visuo-sensorimotor connectivity.

fMRI Visual Reactivity

🔗 Nature (2025)

3. Intrusive Memories: fMRI Study ▼

Hypothesis: Encoding in amygdala & ventral occipital cortex predicts which moments become intrusive.

Cause: Trauma-film encoding during fMRI.

Effect: Stronger amygdala–visual encoding → more intrusions.

Observation: Higher amygdala & ventral occipital activity at encoding predicted later intrusive memories.

fMRI Amygdala Encoding

🔗 PLOS ONE

4. Neural Basis of Involuntary Recall ▼

Hypothesis: Specific encoding patterns in visual–limbic circuits determine involuntary trauma imagery.

Cause: Trauma-film task with later intrusion tracking.

Effect: Identify visual–limbic signatures that drive involuntary recall.

Observation: Encoding activity patterns in occipito-limbic circuits predicted later intrusions/recall.

fMRI Encoding Limbic

🔗 Psych Med

5. Propranolol & PTSD Symptoms (RCT) ▼

Hypothesis: β-adrenergic blockade during reactivation disrupts reconsolidation, weakening trauma memory affect.

Cause: Oral propranolol before weekly trauma-memory reactivation sessions.

Effect: Noradrenergic dampening of restabilization → symptom reduction.

Observation: Greater PTSD symptom reductions vs placebo; supports reconsolidation-blockade approach.

Propranolol Reconsolidation

🔗 PubMed

6. Propranolol in Chronic PTSD (DB-RCT) ▼

Hypothesis: Same as above; test efficacy in chronic PTSD.

Cause: Reactivation + propranolol vs placebo (6 sessions).

Effect: Attenuate emotional weight of memory.

Observation: Both improved; no overall drug–placebo difference; signal in most-severe subgroup.

Propranolol Chronic PTSD

🔗 Nature

7. NEJM Prazosin Trial in Veterans ▼

Hypothesis: α1-blockade during sleep reduces adrenergic drive → fewer nightmares & symptoms.

Cause: Nightly prazosin vs placebo (26 weeks).

Effect: Lower central NE tone during REM/sleep.

Observation: No benefit vs placebo on nightmares, sleep, or global PTSD.

Prazosin Veterans

🔗 NEJM

8. Single IV Ketamine (JAMA Psychiatry) ▼

Hypothesis: NMDA antagonism acutely boosts plasticity to downshift pathological memory traces.

Cause: Single sub-anesthetic ketamine infusion vs midazolam.

Effect: Rapid plasticity → fast symptom relief.

Observation: Rapid PTSD symptom reduction (24h–1wk) vs control.

Ketamine NMDA

🔗 JAMA Psychiatry

9. Repeated Ketamine Infusions (AJP) ▼

Hypothesis: Repeated NMDA modulation yields more durable remapping of threat circuits.

Cause: 6 ketamine infusions (2 wks) vs midazolam.

Effect: Strengthen extinction/modify memory networks.

Observation: Significant PTSD severity reduction; first RCT showing efficacy in chronic PTSD.

Ketamine Repeated Chronic PTSD

🔗 PubMed

10. l-DOPA After Extinction (Women with PTSD) ▼

Hypothesis: Dopamine boost post-extinction strengthens safety memory to prevent return of fear.

Cause: l-DOPA/carbidopa immediately after extinction (fMRI).

Effect: Enhance consolidation of extinction (“remap” threat→safety).

Observation: Reduced reinstatement/return of fear; amygdala patterns support extinction memory.

l-DOPA Dopamine Extinction

🔗 PMC

11. MDMA Therapy & Brain Activity (fMRI) ▼

Hypothesis: MDMA-AT retunes brain networks during trauma recall, lowering visual-imagery contrast.

Cause: Active MDMA sessions within a Phase-2 protocol (pre/post fMRI).

Effect: Increase adaptive FC; dampen amygdala–insula coupling; modulate visual areas.

Observation: ↓ amygdala–insula FC; reduced cuneus contrast; trend ↑ amygdala–hippocampus RSFC.

MDMA fMRI Therapy

🔗 PMC

12. Phase-3 MDMA-AT RCTs (Nature Medicine) ▼

Hypothesis: MDMA fosters fear extinction & reconsolidation updating via neurochemical surge.

Cause: MDMA vs inactive placebo alongside fixed therapy protocol.

Effect: Reopen plasticity; enable trauma-memory “remapping”.

Observation: Large symptom reductions; many no longer met PTSD criteria.

MDMA Therapy Phase-3 RCT

🔗 PubMed 33972795 / 37709999

This is an ongoing research indulgence, a topic very close to my heart. ❤️

Remembering the Past - Photographic Neuro-Therapy

How about some examples from this past week. Generally these are simple captures of points in time, however these are linked to specific time periods of my life when PTSD events occurred. When I see them there is a flood of emotion and physical response: elevated heart rate, deep intake followed by shallow rapid breathing, the echoing surge of norepinephrine from fight or flight response, and inevitable accompanying psychological aversion. These are the effects to be remapped, the process of meditation and cognition-alteration with which to be engaged.

Considerations of Creative-Emotive Outlets

I used to love painting, and perhaps if there were more space for all of my many projects then I would try to get back into the process. Creativity and artistic expression are relaxing and healing; it’s true. Looking back, my last one was a 6’x4’ canvas in acrylics, which I had finished for a contract-design.

After the “assault by gunpoint incident” I simply could not hold a brush, could no longer see the future of the paints upon the canvas, no longer imagine beautiful images finding their way from mind-to-hands. Creativity in that manner simply ceased, and I’ve not been able to resume. Having to stop was like losing part of my identity, connection to passion, vibrancy.

Coming to Terms with Physical Scars

Circa a few years after the coma, we see those two scars which never heal. Sometimes I put concealer on them, sometimes I lose interest in covering them for the sake of the visual public. I’ve written so much about this already, there nothing much new to say right now. I returned, and I live with that fact — feeling every moment.

Early Life and Times in a San Francisco Career

The innocent early years in SF, commonly engaged in expressions of “overly formal” attire for the west coast tech industry. Those occurred at the same time as the gun violence, domestic violence, and desperation-inducing medical trauma. So, how does one already trauma-laden young woman cope with more, while attempting to climb the corporate ladder? Any way she can, an escape artist, international travel, constantly moving, preferring to replace the pain with newness and knowledge.

Coping with a Returning To American Life

There is only so much to say about my most recent return to the USA, moving back to take a mostly-dream job running a hardware research lab. This photo was taken during the initial months when my PRL level began to skyrocket off the reference range; that growing trendline on the many successive blood tests proving tumor growth on the Anterior Pituitary Gland; the Suprasellar-Fossa Meningioma and its migraine inducing Optic Chiasm concerns would arise some years later.

The anterior pituitary secretes a number of peptide and glycoprotein hormones that regulate various cellular processes including growth, metabolism, reproduction, and response to stress or trauma. The hypothalamus regulates the anterior pituitary via secreting “releasing hormones”, somatostatin and dopamine.

The physicians in America ignored my concerns, ignored the labs, ignored everything about this brain tumor for FIVE YEARS until an eventual MRI was ordered. Memories from those five years are extraordinarily difficult to remap, part of an ongoing source of simmering rage underscoring every medical encounter with that health organization. The pituitary tumor was only one marker in a complex set of endocrine system dysfunctions. Regulating its effects in the early stages would have prevented a chain of events from which my body will never return to baseline.

So much physical pain, emotional suffering, and secondary orders of impact could have been prevented if only they had listened (if only anyone had listened) to this one woman’s reproductive system concerns. The medical industry doesn’t care about women - we’re not often profitable enough. Now eight years later, symptom remission requires a forever-expensive and stressful managed condition, but at least thus far I’ve avoided invasive brain surgery.

Parting Thoughts for Project Restoration

The past is not so easily escaped, nor resolved, or often acknowledged — and so it may never heal. However, with sufficient care perhaps these memories may be laid to rest, if not remapped by way of modern self-administered neuroscience miracles. ❤️

Cellular Echoes, a Multi-generational Legacy of DES

Having touched on this in the first post, this section is intended as a refresher. Partially this is intended for raising awareness to a problem which affects millions of people born during the 1950s - 1980s, when DES was administered to pregnant women via medically good-intentions but without awareness to its long-term effects on the mother, children, grandchildren.

Diethylstilbestrol (DES), a carcinogenic endocrine disruptor, has multi-generational adverse effects through disruptions to the neuro-endocrine system and DNA mutations impacting cellular and hormonal development. These mutations can manifest as cancers, metabolic disorders, reproductive dysfunction, chromosomal abnormalities, and chronic neurological conditions (migraines, tumors, lesions, dysautonomia).

This genetic legacy is a backdrop upon which my life was built, which resulted in innumerable divergences of a normal-healthy path, from fulfilling desired physical expectations, procreation, and so much more.

A Reset to The Rules of Engagement

Memory is a skill we easily take for granted, often assuming it accurately captures reality as it unfolds. We’re taught that our experience of the present occurs in real-time, yet in reality, there is a slight delay—signals must first travel through the nervous system and undergo processing before being encoded as memories within the brain’s dura mater. Memory is the brain’s intricate mechanism for translating sensory input into meaningful emotional and behavioral responses, shaping our understanding of both internal and external worlds.

This complex neurological system depends heavily on balanced neurotransmitter function to accurately encode experiences and guide our daily lives. Severe trauma, as seen in PTSD, profoundly disrupts this delicate neural language, permanently altering pathways—especially dopaminergic circuits—that influence emotion, cognition, and behavior. Once formed, these trauma-induced changes can become deeply ingrained, often irreversibly affecting one’s neurological landscape. Coping with severe PTSD thus requires lifelong adaptation, reinforcement of coping strategies, and an ongoing, difficult journey toward acceptance.

Fragmentation of memory can be understood as a memory disorder that includes subjective and phenomenonological facets directly impacting the ability of an individual to recall memories in an integrated and holistic way.

In my seventeenth year I would drive to SF at night to take photos before dawn. Over the years this favorite city of mine became a source of severe and lasting trauma.

The impaired person usually suffers from physical damage to the hippocampus. This may be due to the result of trauma, such as post-traumatic stress disorder… consequences, such as oversensitivity to some stimuli, impulsiveness, lack of direction in life, impacts to existential awareness, emotional dissociation, and often a distorted perception of oneself… requiring the patient to mask their concerns and despair.

Together We Drifted Toward The Void

Eventually, the lifeboat fell apart — the house of cards collapsed. Across the eras of a beautiful yet fractured life, layers of trauma accumulated, intertwining at the point of my near demise, when in the same year I lost my twin. We had endured those early years closely together, though our paths were not always aligned or identical. By this point, the cumulative losses had become immeasurable and insurmountable.

We experienced diametrically-opposed impacts from DES exposure, chromosomal deficiencies echoed in reverse, genomic sequencing showing the maps and flags and arrows all pointing to the wrath of diethylstilbestrol. Everyone has their limits, and we knew so very well where the next decade or two would go, the advanced treatment path involved; the trajectory was bleak and disheartening. Some may judge one’s rational, data-driven decisions, fully respective of life experiences, to be inherently irrational in their moral views. Many people since have levied their opinions, but they were never forced to walk this path.

A Life Without a Mirror

Consistent with the existentially spiteful patterns of non-consensual trauma upon my body, the EMT tasked with saving my life had slit my throat open length-wise, rapidly and jaggedly in an emergent (ie absolute emergency) airway incision. This severed half of my vocal chords, permanently paralyzing that amount of vocal functionality. My brain was already off-line, in global ischemic state, lights out. There was no pain, there was nothing. I was gone.

Memories are mostly lacking from that month, though photographic timestamps provide one view, a phone held while walking, a mistaken shutter press. The askew pupils indicate a rare and severe side effect, the result of ongoing treatment having been fully insufficient. Once more, healthcare providers had failed in their long-term care. After this, nothingness.

unplanned, unexpected, the last photographic memory

Body moved to the ER, the OR, the ICU. A second, larger, circular incision was made in my throat, the first haphazardly sewn closed in zig-zagged scars. My limp unconscious form was hooked up to life support machines. Days passed, a week, then more. Slowly, neural matrices enervated the consciousness to reboot, to resume an awareness of our shared reality.

A pinhole of photons appeared, and from the vast darkness every cell was screaming, oxygen and a feeding tube through the stoma hole in my neck, rhythmic pulsing-machine breathing for me, the only solace a button taped next to my hand for morphine - “press to release”, into the IV line. Apparently I was alive.

The pinhole of light widened, forcing outward the timeless nothingness, replaced by pure all encompassing light, then shades of grey, then shapes, without concept of meaning or definitions.

“Life will only be more difficult now.”

One result of the coma was that broad sections of life, of memories, events and persons, places, experiences.. were simply gone. The variously affected zones and thalamus projections, and some functions of the posterior parietal cortex, they simply did not wake up with the rest of my brain.

I will never remember all of the memories which I have lost.

With those vacant memories, gone too were my former abilities of speech, the ability to walk, to hold a cup, to feel emotions, to focus further than the end of the bed in the ICU, to understand the passage of time. So much was lost.

looking upwards, on an IV drip or two or three

“She may never be able to speak, to walk, or leave the hospital, if she wakes up at all.” - Neurologists, Attending to the ICU

As it turns out, the experience of Global Cerebral Ischemia induces substantial changes - that special “off switch” called “no more oxygen today”. Global Brain Suffocation. Flatline waves. No respiration. System Shutdown. Those scars on my neck - from the respirator stoma and the EMT’s emergency attempted endo-tracheal intubation - they are still present and in the mirror every day. Every morning upon waking, the scars are there, a forever reminder of the Void, the Loss.

Eventually I did relearn how to walk, to speak, to conceptualize the passage of time, and how to exist without those old blocks of memories weighing me down. I learned how to confront what remained, which helped with working through the newly faced medical trauma from the events of the ICU and temporary non-existence.

How did my brain wake up at all? No one had answers. Years later, periodically asking new neurologists, still no one knows. Since waking up, it has never been easy.

When Trauma is linked to Identity

The Self, one’s internal identity, with its link to the past, images of the memories, the joyful moments mixed in with all of those years of pain. It’s a jumble of words and phrases after a while, meaningless. How can one move on when they are no longer fighting an internal struggle against their past? It would seem simple, easy. Perhaps so. Perhaps the temporal lobes, with their functionality and dysfunctionality which results from PTSD, would benefit from additional research; this is my course of action, to reprogram the reactions, reprogram the responses, and to heal the mind and body via positive feedback loops.

a lovely animated gif of the brain’s Frontal Lobe, left cerebral hemisphere

On Consideration of Complexity, Treatment Modality

Neurology is a complex subject. Emotional intelligence and the cognitive underpinnings of its origins and capabilities, these are a complex area of study. The simplest description of the science which describes the manner in which the human brain gathers, processes, stores, and recalls memories is also a complex subject. So much complexity, how to make sense of it all?

Conceptualizing one’s existence after waking up from an event where death was assured, had your throat sliced open with a scalpel, connected to machines to keep your offline brain oxygenated, and then eventually to reintegrate into society’s fabric of shared existence — after returning from the Void of endless nothingness — that is a Complex Circumstance, one which requires a combination of neurological, psychological, and philosophical continuity of care. In America we do not have that as an option, not on any regular insurance plan, the patient must fend for and advocate for themselves.

What then are the options? Is ‘dopamine agonist’ based therapy the only choice? Certain not. It won’t even be recommended by a therapist because it would require enrolling in human trials for the subject, and that’s often far too involved or often unavailable for many patients.

So, one may read this and think and inquire..

“Surely this is a bit extreme, unproven?”, while others have inquired, “why not try the research methods for MDMA, Ketamine, Lysergic Ergolines, or A or B or C or another instead?” Or what about DBT or CBT or EMDR?

Sure, sure. Perhaps in the literal words of one truly genius level therapist..

“How about instead of taking ${critical medication}, you just imagined what it would be like to have these therapy sessions while taking the medication, you know - without taking it?”

The answer to all of these queries is that I have been through every possible and available treatment pathway over the past decade and more. Some have been life changing and positive and beautiful, others less useful, some fully a waste of time. Some therapists have caused additional pain with victim blaming, tearing holes into the tattered fabric being repaired, those horribly malicious people — they do exist, and that in itself is a depressing fact for people seeking care.

Visual Remembrances and Photography as Healing

One of the methods which I’ve found most useful, lasting, and capable of more than words may define, is to repair these old images. Not in an “exposure therapy” manner, but in a restoration of the mind’s emotional response to their evoked memories.

For those who have not immersed themselves into the study of cognitive neuroscience, or found solace in the philosophy of causal-determinism, the concepts around neural-programming may sound like science fiction. Fortunately, our current era of medical science offers the fiction of fifty years ago as an experienced reality - right now, today.

This method involves taking a prescribed ‘dopamine agonist’ medication, which causes the brain to activate dopamine receptors throughout many critical pathways. Once the medication reaches a necessary level, then my gaze is returned to the those slides. Hours will be spent digitizing, processing the images for color correction, repairing film damage spots, and normalizing the ICC profile, normalizing levels, adjusting histograms via curves.

dopamine, the first of the three catecholamines

Human trials for this method are not common. There is no profit to be made by the pharmaceutical companies with drugs which have existed for decades, using personalized treatment which varies by individual (and is therefore difficult to quantify without substantial similarities between patients - and I am not a common patient).

For those curious, I’ve included various embedded links within this document, but here are some additional readings which may offer insight.

• The mesoaccumbens dopamine in coping with stress
• Dopamine D2/D3 receptor agonists attenuate PTSD-like symptoms
• The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in PTSD: Pathophysiology and treatment interventions
• Limbic response to stress linking life trauma and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis function

Why are we talking about the “hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis”? Because the Hypothalamus controls Dopaminergic activity, and the Pituitary gland (which controls hormone secretions) is deeply affected by Dopamine levels rising or falling.

In this meditative mode of visual analysis, amidst silent revisitation of trauma-informed responses, my intentional flow of thoughts attempt to concurrently apply a revised emotional mapping to the associative matrices within; to reprogram the damaged links via new dopaminergic pathway etchings - made possible by the cognitive intensity of this combination of meditation and medication.

It feels like removing rust from a long treasured heirloom, to see the glint of its origin material, its remuneration now complete.

Eva preparing for neural-programming — a self-photo facilitates awareness of Dopamine levels - visually represented as “Dopaminergic Flush”, a stateful readiness for successful treatment

The Great Reprogramming of Dopaminergic Pathways

The mechanism of action involved with this medication facilitates the process of creating new neural connections, by linking sensory data from visual information processing circuity to the emotional response relationships involved with memory recall; all of this occurring via complex actions of the brain’s dopaminergic pathways.

During this treatment process my thoughts wander and I don’t push back, just let the feelings occur and move forward. It’s a form of Zen in some ways, letting the emotions exist without holding on, without “desiring a lack of desire”.

Time and distance is required for reprogramming the mind’s emotional recall, for forgiveness. The process is possibly never complete, but it’s a beautiful experience to find oneself on the other side, able to look backward and see the beautiful ways that once were.

I see those youthful eyes, consistent across each image, reminders every time. The earlier years retained an innocence about them, harboring damage too deep to acknowledge, express, or let forth. Now those moments can be set to rest, and in whatever way it may heal, it offers solace.

eyes reflect with a minor smirk, thrust into the present from so many years passed

Carrying around my father’s old Pentax ME Super 35mm film camera (digital did not yet exist), I would learn the ways and means of translating one’s vibrant sensory world of tangible, visible, and audible queues into a reflexive snapshot of a single ellipses of time.

Film photography platform of my youth, the glorious Pentax ME Super

The science of film, its correctness of inter-related momentary ordinals, exists as a knowable object in its own right; defined by functions which can be modeled, simulated, and counter-adjusted according to objectively determined interlocked sliding scales of equilibrium equations… the science of light was logical, beautiful.

The spatial-dimensional complex of neurons and axons within my young mind was growing rapidly, desperate for knowledge, experience, adventure. So much of that mindset was searching for answers, finding beauty along the way, often in spite of the many stumbles and tragedies intertwined.

On Genetic Inheritance and Endocrine Disrupters

Looking back on those years, I see patterns arise, ones which describe the ensuing years in predictable ways, in their benefits and concerns equally mixed. I was not a canonically ’troubled youth’, rather my troubles were genetic in origin — now identified as ‘Generational DES Syndrome’.

[*] DES = Diethylstilbestrol is a carcinogenic, xenoestrogen, ATPase inhibitor, endocrine disruptor. Linked to a variety of long-term adverse effects in women who were treated with it during pregnancy, and in their offspring, and further affecting the F2 generation of grandchildren.

In simple terms, this causes DNA mutations which are carried forth into systemic neuro-endocrine development, cellular expressions both causative and compounding, as the body develops into adulthood. Whether these cellular mutations result in cancer, neoplasms, meningiomas, metabolic dysregulation, sex and growth hormone disruption, reproductive sterility, chromosomal defects, or combinations of those and other grievous maladies, the possible impacts are vast in quantity and scale — and still being studied.

Some patients lead generally normal lives, ignorant of the cause for their condition, while others experience an unnecessarily early death. In-between these extremes my life has coalesced, wavering between periods of intensely healthy highly-competitive endurance athleticism to months of debilitation from chronic nervous system collapse. Some of my most memorable resting moments were the cumulative hours knocked-out from exhaustion and asleep inside the cold, dark, rhythmic magnetic thumping of a MRI tube, or the pulsing energy waves inside occasionally very warm CT scanners.

DES has disruptive effects which exert negative feedback on the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis (HPG axis), suppresses the secretion of the gonadotropins, luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), and suppresses sex hormone production as well as gamete production and maturation.

Looking back on DES and its impacts within my genetic programming, I can see where it derailed an otherwise normal childhood, where it imparted physical and existential questions for which no adult or physicians ever had answers, and how those early years drove me further into an adulthood focused on amassing knowledge of systems theory, neurology, endocrinology, genetics, biochemistry, and decades of exploration into modulating the steroidogenesis process occurring within these veins.

Coincidentally, I would later learn that endocrine specific cancers were rampant in my mother’s side of the family - likely also from intergenerational DES effects. Over the many years, my endocrine’s HPG-axis would crash in more than one dimension via multi-glandular failures, a pituitary hypophysis neoplasia diagnosis would arise, diagnostic concerns into suprasellar meningioma, and eventually the cumulative effects would lead to the conditions which resulted in my near-death and coma.

Youthful Adventures, Expansive Landscapes

Scaping together enough for a second-hand Manfrotto tripod and lenses for a near-mint Nikon FE2 - the camera I received from my father for one birthday so long ago, that period was when my heart fell in love with the beauty of capturing moments in time. Youthful innocence was at a peak, everywhere held introspective beauty in some manner - if it was framed subjectively well and maintained The Rules.

rain arrives along the Western Slope of the Rockies

Then there was the glorious selection of film: the richness of Velvia 50 - perfect for landscapes but too rich for portraits, the ever-so-accurate Provia 100, the old classic Kodachrome 64, occasionally the normality of Ektar 100, and on occasion spending time without color at all - but oh let me show you Agfa’s superpanchromatic Scala 200, the most uncommon of them all.

I loved this era of film for its uniqueness, it’s vivid ability to capture reality in a way that was lacking in prior decades - eras of advancements in technology which defined the ability for people to capture the present tense and carry it into the future, with accuracy, realness, and tangibility that we will never have with today’s digital options.

the slide films of my youth, vivid colors, rich contrast, a life before the digital world

I loved this era of film for its uniqueness, it’s vivid ability to capture reality in a way that was lacking in prior decades - eras of advancements in technology which defined the ability for people to capture the present tense and carry it into the future, with accuracy, realness, and tangibility that we will never have with today’s digital options.

As with everything immersion worthy, I studied photography via encyclopaedias, library books, documentaries, and by asking a thousand questions. Who best to answer but Elke, the co-owner and an early role model at my local professional photography shop; one which housed an amazing collection of vintage cameras and lenses - many that I would imagine forever out of reach: Leica, Hasselblad, Rolleiflex, Zeiss.

My perspective in those times demanded that the best memories surely must be captured, regardless that slide film was expensive. Each shot was a cherished and planned capture, yet still one were lucky to have 2-3 usable results per roll of 24-36. Fantastisch. I loved every minute of the process.

Of Landscapes and Studio Lights

These slides became a timeline, closely selected and optimized photos of my adventures, my travels: the tragedy of storms and the silent motions of rain, landscapes and sunrises and sunsets, mountains especially loved and well traveled. Of peaks climbed, valleys explored, off-trail backcountry wanderings alone in the autumn, and cold snowshoeing adventures with Vati too.

Then the studio. Learning about black and white film, darkroom techniques, rear-projection lights, soft-bounce filters, shade-booms, and multi-flash timers connected to a remote shutter that I could hold in one hand - the original selfie method, before the term was ever coined. These self portraitures were mostly a private occurrence, an experiment to record an ever-changing existence which often felt unknowable and painfully everlasting, other times its opposite.

long adrift in lostness, many found in my eyes precisely who they wanted to see

Conceptualization of Self

In some ways it was photography which helped me work through the DES-affected hormonal years of explosive emotions: the Conceptualization of Self as an evolving modality. How could one build a schema involving periodic memory without tracking the memories? And what better way to have reference to those than with film?

So, along with landscapes I captured my visage; an evolving physical form of perpetual wonderment and wandering cognition, deeply felt emotions, all wrapped up into a warm body with occasionally ice-cold blue eyes - constantly changing and growing through the years.

a single spoken “please”, but no one was truly listening

From the Outside Life Was Wonderful

Unfortunately along the way there were events of intense and prolonged trauma which led to a deeply felt hatred for nearly the entire era of youthful memories - not for what the photos were, not for who I was, but for the memory’s visual associations with the events of the era in which the traumas occurred.

I had no ability to heal from the events at that time, and so to my young mind those events simply could not exist, lest it were to be that I did not exist. It was one or the other: acknowledge the trauma for what it was, how it had shaped me, and chose to suffer the wrath of my own willing hands. Or instead, I would rather to erase all of it. Erase the moments from my mind and never think of them or refer to them or believe that they were real; to erase part of my experience with life. Years later that wish would be granted, an outcome in ways impossibly unexpected.

Existentially, it was a challenging duality. So the slide portfolio was put aside, boxed up, never taken out to review or inspect or share, and only occasionally forcefully ignored whenever asked about the subjects. The memories did not exist. The cognitive methods I learned became a hardened, steadfast technique, an emotional control unrelenting, and it lasted decades. No one knew anything, and no one needed to. Those memories were only pain (but they were not, my youth held so many beautiful moments, ones which I would only connect with decades later).

Outward Success Surely Heals Old Wounds

Years passed and milestones occurred, much as the loved ones around me had long expected. A standard life evolved. Marriage, a home, thoughts on pregnancy, depression, elation, stress, travel, and promotions, and everything being pretty good on the surface.

A blink of the eyes and there I am again: Bare. Lost. Alone. In the pure Darkness.

Yet family was there, friends were there, all of the markers of success and happiness were there. Regardless, trauma events from years ago were invalidating the potential for happiness in ways unknowable to the loved ones around me. No one could ever know. The memories could not exist, or I would carry them to my grave.

years so often idyllic, if not for the unspoken undercurrent

Concurrently, an undercurrent of escapism, a subtext to the patterns of wants and needs, this was all despite the abundance, and it was that undercurrent which became a rushing and inescapably deep tide. The memories become an unwanted passenger, a little non-angel perched on the shoulder - whispering reminders in the most inopportune times. A foil to the good times, intertwining themselves deeper, demanding either solace and release or self-destruction.

Trauma at the clinical level, the kind which arises from unspeakable events in youth, or wartime combat, or being assaulted at gunpoint and left stripped and alone in the pure darkness of 18th & Florida St at 3am; those somatosensory memories become etched in the mind. Maybe more than one event is etched, maybe there’s too many to describe.

Bleeding out in a sodium-halide bright white tile-floored bathroom, a stainless steel drain on the floor in the middle where the redness of life circles and downward flows. You slip in the blood, bare-footed, abdomen held in one hand, reaching-grasping with the other, screaming voicelessly in full-system shock.

How about the ways in which The World Bank’s usage of Ai and LLMs have helped scientists understand populations at risk, how to analyze massive datasets to respond to climate catastrophes, and how to accurately predict global infrastructure changes before they occur?

Well… it’s our lucky day!

The World Bank regularly posts Jupyter notebooks, LLM tooling, data-sets, data analytics scripts, global dashboards related to climate sciences, infrastructure, poverty assessment, economic awareness modeling, and so much more… right over here on their GitHub page: github.com/orgs/worl…

One item recently in the FOSS news was this gem, the Metadata Editor.

• Project: worldbank.github.io/metadata-…
• Source: github.com/worldbank…
• Schemas: worldbank.github.io/metadata-…

Oh but there’s also some fun with NASA!

• worldbank.github.io/blackmarb…

BlackMarblePy is a Python package that provides a simple way to use nighttime lights data from NASA’s Black Marble project. Black Marble is a NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) project that provides a product suite of daily, monthly and yearly global nighttime lights.

This is a heartening example of the beauty and benefits which Open Source Software offer to our world.

#science #finance #worldbank #foss #oss #llms #ai #programming #engineering #nasa

In association with the country itself, the bills are very pretty, colorfully fun, and durably resistant to humidity and water damage — useful for hiking through cloud and rain forests, diving at a local reef, or being caught out in a multi hour downpour.

For unknown reasons I left these bills inside of the booklet’s secondary tab next to my passport, and now they’re going right back into the booklet for a future surprise, and certainly future use during the next visit.

How about some slow motion ocean waves? Sure. Later in the day, and on many days afterwards, it was a favorite local beach.

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#travel #surprise #CostaRica

Countdown to being back in the Progressive stronghold of anti-decency, antisemitic political action groups, achievement penalties, social disincentivization, horrific levels of taxed wage theft, hardened-recidivist criminals held wholly unaccountable, land of the not-so-free California - the state I always want to leave and never want to return to. Round… 8? 6? I don’t even want to think about the number of times I’ve left and never wanted to return, but then had to return. At every opportunity to leave, I have left, and here - now - one year later - entirely because healthcare is expensive and life requires money, I’m going right the fuck back. This round, I give it 12-16 months, maybe.

However, and not in jest, nearly the entirety of my accomplishments could have occurred in an old military quonset hut located off-grid, deep in the vast stretches of the Northern Nevada desert, preferably near the Ruby Mountains.

The Ruby Mountains, Nevada. Rocky cliffs and vibrant wildflowers under a clear blue sky.

snow covered peaks of The Ruby Mountains, Nevada

So, goodbye to another location. I suppose that I could say that Chicago was beneficial in the larger sense of existential purposes, and that much was accomplished, but unfortunately that was not the case.

In personable social terms, an immediate realization dawned upon landing, that so many people seem to love tall western women, to be quite vocal in appreciation and awareness, and what little Japanese I had memorized repeatedly informed to whom they were certainly referring. I’ve never felt tall until someone brings it up, but that all goes back to teenage years when plasma levels of recombinant-hGH were too low, then boosted too high. Short torso, long legs, and that’s just fine.

Those months that summer were memories of a pure, simple existence, the joy of living in a beautiful foreign land with a wonderfully kind culture; one where I could not read a single sign, nor understand more than several helpful conversational phrases. A stranger in a strange land. A summer of intense philosophical reassessment, of isolationist meditation, with the majority of months spent traveling alone through four countries across two hemispheres. Circa 2017 feels so far away.

circa 2017, during a global foray into personal unknowns, just as the tumor began to grow.

Perhaps more travel photos will follow. I’m in a reflective mood today. 🩷

#travel #photography #memories