tldr: we took a breath. now we're back, and we have things to tell you.

salon_7 was 25 people at death & taxes on a wednesday night in march, four months after s2e4 and longer than we ever meant to be away. over 70% of the room had been to a mosaic event before. they came back not because we reminded them to, but because the thing we're building together is real enough to wait for. the question we kept circling in the months before that night was an honest one: does mosaic still mean something, or has it become one more thing we do?

we put that question on the table at salon_7. what came back was clear: the world being relentlessly difficult is not a reason to stop. there's no inner revolution without dance and good times, together. we remembered that in that room, which is exactly what rooms like that are for.

so mosaic is coming back this summer, properly, for season 3. more on the when and where very soon.

a study published in science advances this month did something worth pausing on. researchers at the weizmann institute engineered a tobacco plant to simultaneously produce five psychedelic compounds: psilocybin, dmt, and 5-meo-dmt among them, using genes drawn from plants, fungi, and toads, and alphafold3 to redesign a single enzyme. one amino acid change, 40-fold increase in yield. a tobacco plant. producing psilocybin. designed with ai 🤯

the coverage has been predictably focused on what this means for supply chains and clinical trials, and that's all real and worth following. what strikes us is the larger picture: the tools for producing and understanding these compounds are advancing faster than our collective sense of what they're actually for. the science is running. the culture is still catching up, and the question of what we do with expanded consciousness isn't a chemistry problem. it gets worked out between people, over dinner, in the specific kind of conversation that doesn't happen on a screen.

which brings us to where we're having that conversation next.

makilala means "to get to know" in tagalog, which felt almost too perfect for what salons are. chef nuit and jeff regular, the team behind pai, kiin, and sukhothai, built this one around something more personal: jeff and his brother joel's filipino roots, their family recipes, 20 years of nuit learning to cook them. the space feels like a barangay, a traditional filipino community gathering space, communal tables, a stage, warm and loud in exactly the way a good dinner table should be. the food is extraordinary.

prix fixe, shareable apps, your choice of a main. this is the kind of meal that makes you stay longer than you planned. space is limited to 30 people.

register on luma: luma.com/7z53juq0.

if cost is a barrier, reach out directly.

_{DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.}