SWIM is in the middle of a bridgesii extraction at the moment, just working though his old cactus before his 4ft of bridgesii arrive. Swim's going the d-limo/ron route, but has made a few modifications. First, he did not boil his tea, just did long soaks starting with boiling water acidified with fumaric acid in tall glass bottles. Let them decant, and a few days later pour off and reduce on low heat. No boiling at all. Then he filtered his reduced tea (approx 1c for 20g dry cactus and approx 3" fresh) with a 101 filter paper with his vac. apparatus. This cleared it up immensely, turned a clear golden piss color.
Then it was all evaped down to a resin, a light tan resin that sparkles with crystals and looks much better than brown crappy resin he as made before. From here, swim is going to mix the resin into some water and lime, let it dry, add mgso4 to be safe, grind, and then dump powder into some d-limo. He's thinking max surface area, and no water will be max efficiency. Then it will be a fumaric acid water salting, and a dry acetone wash to finish things up. He's done this route before, but failed bigtime when his glass jar with the cactus powder/dlimo broke on him. Still was able to salvage some limo and got some mesky out of it, but feels like alot was lost due to this stupid mistake.
He will try to remember to post his yeilds and thoughts on how the extraction went when he's done.
"let those who have talked to the elves, find each other and band together" -TMK
In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, etc. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.” - Wendell Berry