Fungi Friday's - August 5th, 2022
Issue #42
Hey Fungi Friday fam, happy Friday!
Finally made it down to farm last weekend to assess the wind damage to the panels and get going on trial #2. Honestly, panels weren’t too bad. We ended up enhancing the mounts, installed the extra ventilation unit we needed, and ended up packing fifteen bags of pink oysters. Two weeks in the incubation room and we’ll be back to our next attempt at fruiting some mushrooms!
Overall, everything looks good at the moment. Biggest question mark is still our power situation, but the panels being optimized and the different power consumption aspects being set on a timer have us feeling optimistic. Hopefully we’ve fixed the issues from round one.
That’s the weekly update for now though, lets get into this weeks stories…
Can mushroom cladding save us from air pollution?
Feature number one on the week is all about that little honeycomb structure in the image above. It’s a new design from students of London’s Brunel University, in which they hope to utilize this external wall tile system to potentially remove dangerous hydrocarbons from the air, reducing the impact of vehicle emissions and the burning of fossil fuels.
How are they doing it? Well its produced using a mix of waste sawdust and fungal spores, made from mycelium. When transfixed to the outside of a building, the fungi breaks down and absorbs 80% of hydrocarbons, which it transforms into food to fuel its continued growth. Overall, I think this is a pretty cool and innovative solution to a widespread problem. While I can’t say whether or not it’s 100% going to work, the experiment is definitely novel and worth paying attention to.
Mushroom Chocolate: The New Wave in Mind Altering Edibles
From functional mushroom supplements to psilocybin laced bars, mushroom chocolate is a rapidly growing industry and that’s the focus of issue number two this week. Few foods engender as much passion or popularity as chocolate. Dense, decadent, and creamy: chocolate has left an indelible imprint on human civilization. So too have mushrooms, with their mind-bending, medicinal properties. But what kind of transcendental magic takes place when you combine the two to make mushroom chocolate?
That’s a question that creative chocolate connoisseurs and shroom enthusiasts are currently rushing to answer. Right now, mushroom chocolate is having a serious moment. The emerging creations lean towards both the legal and illegal ends of the spectrum. Mycophiles can choose between hot chocolate and bars laced with medicinal mushrooms such as Lion’s Mane, or deluxe chocolate crafted with psilocybin mushrooms. The growing popularity of both speaks to a trend first triggered by cannabis edibles: good things happen when plant medicine is presented as a delicious treat.
The article goes into detail on the benefits of psilocybin, what exactly is micro-dosing, and also the standard legality disclaimers. As we’ve seen over the past half decade, the edible marijuana industry has absolutely exploded. Only a matter of time, in my opinion, until the edible mushroom industry tags along.
So you want to start micro-dosing mushrooms?
After all, microdosing is everywhere right now. On Netflix, Fantastic Fungi and How to Change Your Mindare some of the streaming service’s most popular documentaries. Over on TikTok, the hashtag #mushies has amassed 27.9 million views while #microdoselife has racked up 20.9 million. On top of this, Google searches for “how to microdose mushrooms” are up on average too compared to last year, and searches asking “are microdosing magic mushrooms legal” skyrocketed at the tail end of 2021.
And even though they’re still not legal, as they contain the psychedelic compound psilocybin, making them a Class A drug, as anyone who lives in the real world knows, this obviously doesn’t stop people from taking them. The train has already left the station, and from white-collar business owners to vanlifers, it seems like everybody is getting on board. So with that, our final article of the week ultimately piggybacks on the coattails of issue number two from this week’s publication, providing a break down on what exactly is micro-dosing and why is it having it’s moment. This article goes into what exactly it means to micro-dose, what to expect if you try it out, how to do it, where to source, and finally what to do if your experience goes bad. If any of that is any interest to you, its worth a read.
Want even more? Here are some other interesting, mushroom focused reads of the week:
As always, thank you for reading this weeks edition of Fungi Friday’s! If you enjoyed what you found, please feel free to forward to friends also interested in the Fungi Community!
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