I found myself not liking the film very much, despite finding parts of it educational and illuminating.
Particularly, I found it really bizarre that it discusses the stoned ape theory without mentioning any of the criticism or prevailing theories against it. The movie just passes it (and most other things Stamets believes) along as unchallenged gospel.
It took me out of it and made the film feel (even more) ideologically one-sided, despite the fact that the film is full of interesting detail otherwise.
Yeah it turned weirder and more opinionated towards the end. If you are a die hard tripper/stoner then that must have been delighting, otherwise not so much. Visual side for the first part is stunning though.
One of the concerns I have is that there is a correlation between temperature and soil biology that appears to disfavor micorhyzzal symbiosis in warmer, wetter situations.
And while building these communities can sink carbon and make for more resilient temperate forests, doing so may take more and more effort over time, or become infeasible in some areas.
My roommate moved out, and we couldn't fill the room in the coronavirus world, so we started a mushroom farm making a couple hundred pound of oysters per week and haven't looked back:
Agreed! I spend a couple hours a week packing bags basically and have found it as a way to relax.
I read Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Stamets and subject myself to public shaming on /r/mushroomgrowers, got spawn from North Spore (though there are other several good ones I can recommend if you email me, would probably not recommend going straight to inoculate/spores as you need a more sterile env), bought a fog machine from a mini golf course, racks from home depot, using wood pellets (which come pasteurized as a side effect of pelletization, compared to pasteurizing yourself which is a huge PITA unless you can do it with lime in bulk imho), and a raspberry pi controller to monitor humidity to turn on/off fog machine
No doubt. I`ve come across a few worthwhile perspectives.
Though I observed someone yesterday for the 1st time here that could not form their own conclusion/opinion and was agitated by their incompetence. I agree that the humour is pretty thick sometimes.
For people outside the USA, the idea of mixed units, or even just the various interpretations of imperial/archaic, I suspect isn't as intrinsically droll as it perhaps is from within a culture that's still trying to work out whether to adopt a basic measurement system in use across 95% of the planet.
However, gripes aside, for fruity measurements you may wish to adopt (read: you may not be aware of, but if you aren't, I suspect you'd approve) the FFF [6] measurement system.
The above relationship would be expressed as 54 furlongs of mycelium per 1.2283533E-7 cubic furlongs. (I think)
Make sure you keep a HEPA filter running so you don’t get mushroom lung from the spores. If you’re growing in the hundreds of pounds per week I wouldn’t even go into that room without full PPE.
Please share more about this! I’ve been thinking about trying this myself, and I’d love to hear more, about both the tech / ops side, and the economic side.
From data (Mycorrhizal Functioning: An Integrative Plant-Fungal Process; Michael Allen) an estimate of 200cm per gram of soil is mentioned. This would translate to 2000m per kilogram and 2.000.000m = 2000km per tonne of soil. A cubic meter of soil should weight on average 2.6g/mL so it would come out even higher at 5200 km per cubic meter.
'in 2014 scientists reported that they had grown oyster mushrooms on a substance made from used diapers, reducing their weight and volume by eighty per cent'
This may refer to a study in 2015. [1] Along with Ideonella sakaiensis, bacteria which can also break down PET[2], there seems to be potential for nature to heal the wounds we have inflicted on it.
Can anybody explain what is preventing us from expanding this? According to this article, 'bacteria are far easier to harness for industrial uses'. [3] What limits these solutions to acedemia and studies instead of being used to reduce plastic pollution on a widespread basis?
A good rule of thumb is that everything an organism does costs energy. If a bacterium produces the proteins necessary to break down plastic, create gasoline precursors, etc, then it likely paid for that with a reduced ability to defend itself or otherwise compete outside of a sterile environment. The energy/labor cost to maintain that environment for your bioreactor can be cost prohibitive (either in the narrow sense in which you put yourself at a disadvantage because competitors use cheaper strategies or even in the broad sense where, e.g., energy costs are large enough to completely counteract any environmental benefits).
It's fairly common for the waste products to be toxic to your microorganisms (or to need a high concentration of the growth medium, etc). If that mixed output of partially digested waste, biomass, etc is not useful by itself (e.g. because it's a little less environmentally impactful than the raw precursors) then you're faced with the challenge of modifying or purifying it into something that is worthwhile.
There aren't a lot of economically sustainable business models you can build around "healing the environment," however beneficial it might be. If you aren't directly producing something profitable (e.g. construction materials made from fungi) then your main path to profitability is to rely on donations of some kind (sometimes charitable donations or crowdfunding, usually grants or other legal maneuverings). Mind you, I think that has potential to be a great outcome -- tax businesses proportionally to the damage they do (banning practices we don't know how to clean up) and simultaneously fund businesses who fix it. That funding route is still pretty unpolished though, and any business pursuing that avenue is fighting a regulatory battle on top of any biotech problems.
As a former relatively active amateur mycologist, the question we hated hearing the most from non-mycologists was "is it edible?"
Can't we be interested in fungi just for the sake of being interested? Why do fungi have to serve a purpose for most people in order to be interesting to them?
35 comments
[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadhttps://youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8258074/
https://www.jrepodcast.com/episode/joe-rogan-experience-1035...
https://www.jrepodcast.com/episode/joe-rogan-experience-1385...
Particularly, I found it really bizarre that it discusses the stoned ape theory without mentioning any of the criticism or prevailing theories against it. The movie just passes it (and most other things Stamets believes) along as unchallenged gospel.
It took me out of it and made the film feel (even more) ideologically one-sided, despite the fact that the film is full of interesting detail otherwise.
The SAH has always seemed empty to me. If you don't propose an actual mechanism, do you even have a hypothesis?
And while building these communities can sink carbon and make for more resilient temperate forests, doing so may take more and more effort over time, or become infeasible in some areas.
https://heartymushroom.com/
Stamets taught me that one cubic meter of soil has 7 miles of mycelium! I think we have a lot to learn from the digestive tract of nature :)
I read Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Stamets and subject myself to public shaming on /r/mushroomgrowers, got spawn from North Spore (though there are other several good ones I can recommend if you email me, would probably not recommend going straight to inoculate/spores as you need a more sterile env), bought a fog machine from a mini golf course, racks from home depot, using wood pellets (which come pasteurized as a side effect of pelletization, compared to pasteurizing yourself which is a huge PITA unless you can do it with lime in bulk imho), and a raspberry pi controller to monitor humidity to turn on/off fog machine
61023.7 cubic inches of soil contains 1.97984 nautical leagues of mycelium.
I`m still counting the inches in a light-year, so the nautical leagues perspective made me giggle a little.
Though I observed someone yesterday for the 1st time here that could not form their own conclusion/opinion and was agitated by their incompetence. I agree that the humour is pretty thick sometimes.
However, gripes aside, for fruity measurements you may wish to adopt (read: you may not be aware of, but if you aren't, I suspect you'd approve) the FFF [6] measurement system.
The above relationship would be expressed as 54 furlongs of mycelium per 1.2283533E-7 cubic furlongs. (I think)
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
Yes, I wasn’t aware of the FFF system.
I particularly like the fortnight as a unit of time!
I approve! :)
That's 4 orders of magnitude difference.
7 miles in an inch cubed... That's insane.
From data (Mycorrhizal Functioning: An Integrative Plant-Fungal Process; Michael Allen) an estimate of 200cm per gram of soil is mentioned. This would translate to 2000m per kilogram and 2.000.000m = 2000km per tonne of soil. A cubic meter of soil should weight on average 2.6g/mL so it would come out even higher at 5200 km per cubic meter.
Just nitpicking :)
This may refer to a study in 2015. [1] Along with Ideonella sakaiensis, bacteria which can also break down PET[2], there seems to be potential for nature to heal the wounds we have inflicted on it.
Can anybody explain what is preventing us from expanding this? According to this article, 'bacteria are far easier to harness for industrial uses'. [3] What limits these solutions to acedemia and studies instead of being used to reduce plastic pollution on a widespread basis?
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26291558
[2] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6278/1196
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/16/scientis...
It's fairly common for the waste products to be toxic to your microorganisms (or to need a high concentration of the growth medium, etc). If that mixed output of partially digested waste, biomass, etc is not useful by itself (e.g. because it's a little less environmentally impactful than the raw precursors) then you're faced with the challenge of modifying or purifying it into something that is worthwhile.
There aren't a lot of economically sustainable business models you can build around "healing the environment," however beneficial it might be. If you aren't directly producing something profitable (e.g. construction materials made from fungi) then your main path to profitability is to rely on donations of some kind (sometimes charitable donations or crowdfunding, usually grants or other legal maneuverings). Mind you, I think that has potential to be a great outcome -- tax businesses proportionally to the damage they do (banning practices we don't know how to clean up) and simultaneously fund businesses who fix it. That funding route is still pretty unpolished though, and any business pursuing that avenue is fighting a regulatory battle on top of any biotech problems.
Etc.
Can't we be interested in fungi just for the sake of being interested? Why do fungi have to serve a purpose for most people in order to be interesting to them?