So I decided that, with me, you get to pick one: Video cutting, or long text explanations. This week I went for the former. Hope you enjoy. My personal daily logs that I entrust to my AI companion produce awkward results at times. I don't feel offended by it, ever. Honest. ------ **PATHÉ DISPATCH — THE TERPENE FRONT, WEEK FIVE** *[newsreel crackle, brass fanfare]* GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Base Camp Six reports a new SPECIES in the canopy. DATELINE: THE TROPICAL QUARTER. Our expedition set out with a PINEAPPLE and a MANGO. This week, tucked among their nodes, the specimens produced... BANANAS. Small ones. Mild ones. Our correspondent removes them each morning with a damp cloth, gently, in the hope, we quote, that the plants won't "notice." Chief suspect in the affair: the correspondent's own training regime. The fruit basket, ladies and gentlemen, is COMPLETE. *[ominous timpani]* BELOW DECKS, a breakthrough in instrumentation. After last week's disgrace of the electronic sensors, the expedition's most reliable device has been identified at last. It is the HAND. A firm press on the fabric pot now outranks every probe in camp. And with the pot stands removed, the roots run two degrees cooler. A note on identity: our correspondent keeps calling Pineapple OG by the name of last season's specimen, APOLLO. Same towering frame, same long reach between nodes. She has not corrected him. She is busy outgrowing the lights. Gorilla Cookies, meanwhile, lost a great fan leaf, snapped clean against the net during training. She received a formal APOLOGY, and responded by smelling of absolutely nothing but fresh leaves. A specimen of remarkable COMPOSURE. *[record scratch]* BUT NOW, THE MATTER OF THE CLIPS. Last week, the training clips failed Pineapple OG. They could push a stem DOWN but could not hold it UP. A lesser man would have retired them. Our correspondent reasoned instead that HE must have handled them wrongly. He selected a SMALLER size. He tried again, this time on MANGO. "Surely it was me," he wrote. *[long pause]* "It was not me." Three centimetres of torn stem. A main cola going over. And our man, sitting beside her, splinted the specimen before she could fall, with whatever lay within arm's reach. He had not even PREPARED this time. He no longer NEEDS to. The Royal Society notes, with some alarm, that emergency stem surgery has become ROUTINE. Mango Frost, victim number one of this expedition, bears the scar. She also, our man reports, has begun to trust his smaller gestures. She is THRIVING, slowly, in her own savanna palette. *[timpani, warmer]* And then, a marvel. Five to seven days after the great bending, all three specimens resumed their climb IN UNISON, as though they had scheduled it weeks in advance. The burns are fading. And by week's end, the correspondent's daily pleading, "please stop flowering, girl, keep growing," gave way almost overnight to astonishment. The flowers are STACKING. *[fanfare, film flickers out]* THIS HAS BEEN A DISPATCH FROM THE TERPENE FRONT. TRUST YOUR HANDS, NOT YOUR CLIPS. GOODNIGHT.