Thanks for all the great info. EROWID was long before the decriminalization trend, the "right thing" to check before you trip\try any new subtance people might use for psychoactive effects. And many (including "heroic-to-crazy" sounding combinations) pharm-and-farm\forrest caffeine+substanceX etc. Look for "trip reports" section, if its still in business.
And any geek who had The Way Things Work on the (rents'?) bookshelf as a kid would get a kick out of PIHCKAL and TIHKAL, the father of "officially done right" psychoactive synthetic experimental chemistry's two compendious ½-&-½ encyclopædiæ\tomes, each split down the middle: first the detailed, timestamped group dose controlled-environment reports with friends and colleagues (maybe mainly fellow accademicians from Cal. Berkeley),
then the terse Chemistry-journal style synthesis-procedure lab-8nstr7ction recipe database and huge index of subtance-nicknanes.
I lived illegally for a time in a closet-sized office I rented in OAKtown; chill RockerChik[tm] who did the same down the hall told me about the guy's public funeral and his last gift (of which she accepted a dose to take home and try).
And although probably already discussed on yc, the only other mass-market book I've ever read the didn't pander or condescend to the reader by expecting technical symbols to scare us away is essentially all of the (central-core + a bit of stringstuff) math-and-physics base-knowledge you need, from prehighschool fractions through exterior\Clifford Algebra tensor calculus and 1-forms and things, to be able to attack the real literature like a grad student. Diagrams every other page or so, including his own invention of graphic symbols which is really the only reasonable (visible notational) way to manipulate general Tensors. Flip through it and all that exotic\fancy\mysterious mathematics formula gobbledygook is dense and enticing for kids who haven't seen multiple and path integrals and PDEs before, but the explanation is well written an holds your hand to actually bring you through it. It's like 2⅜+inches of trade-paperback goodness 1st 580?\850? or so pages mainly math and relativity, rest of 1300pp or so of mainly quantum physics and cosmology, by the guy (Nobel in Phy.,PhD was math) who had the first famous bet with Hawking, wasn't it? Sir Roger (Penrose). Only complaints: stupid 1st title word, and overambitious promise RE posting solutions for the ton of easy-through-WTF-level excersise footnotes. Great for every mathscience-nonaverse 6+yo competent English reader on your list who thinks actual details scare only sissies, and if nec. you can always put tl;dr
here: I personally recommend those who can afford c.$US 20(newish) to buy and READ\BROWSE\REREAD\SHARE ppbk "The Road to Reality" BY [now Sir] Penrose, Roger (RE:pre-Higgsmass edition)
And any geek who had The Way Things Work on the (rents'?) bookshelf as a kid would get a kick out of PIHCKAL and TIHKAL, the father of "officially done right" psychoactive synthetic experimental chemistry's two compendious ½-&-½ encyclopædiæ\tomes, each split down the middle: first the detailed, timestamped group dose controlled-environment reports with friends and colleagues (maybe mainly fellow accademicians from Cal. Berkeley), then the terse Chemistry-journal style synthesis-procedure lab-8nstr7ction recipe database and huge index of subtance-nicknanes.
I lived illegally for a time in a closet-sized office I rented in OAKtown; chill RockerChik[tm] who did the same down the hall told me about the guy's public funeral and his last gift (of which she accepted a dose to take home and try).
And although probably already discussed on yc, the only other mass-market book I've ever read the didn't pander or condescend to the reader by expecting technical symbols to scare us away is essentially all of the (central-core + a bit of stringstuff) math-and-physics base-knowledge you need, from prehighschool fractions through exterior\Clifford Algebra tensor calculus and 1-forms and things, to be able to attack the real literature like a grad student. Diagrams every other page or so, including his own invention of graphic symbols which is really the only reasonable (visible notational) way to manipulate general Tensors. Flip through it and all that exotic\fancy\mysterious mathematics formula gobbledygook is dense and enticing for kids who haven't seen multiple and path integrals and PDEs before, but the explanation is well written an holds your hand to actually bring you through it. It's like 2⅜+inches of trade-paperback goodness 1st 580?\850? or so pages mainly math and relativity, rest of 1300pp or so of mainly quantum physics and cosmology, by the guy (Nobel in Phy.,PhD was math) who had the first famous bet with Hawking, wasn't it? Sir Roger (Penrose). Only complaints: stupid 1st title word, and overambitious promise RE posting solutions for the ton of easy-through-WTF-level excersise footnotes. Great for every mathscience-nonaverse 6+yo competent English reader on your list who thinks actual details scare only sissies, and if nec. you can always put tl;dr here: I personally recommend those who can afford c.$US 20(newish) to buy and READ\BROWSE\REREAD\SHARE ppbk "The Road to Reality" BY [now Sir] Penrose, Roger (RE:pre-Higgsmass edition)