Notices by Brian Ó (blacksam@social.gibberfish.org), page 46

They oyster mushrooms haven't turned out well. They're not supposed to look like this :(

The consensus among mushroom growers is that this is due to an excess of CO₂ in the fruiting tent. Mushrooms respire CO₂ as they grow, and they can essentially choke themselves on their own gasses in a closed environment. Oyster mushrooms are especially sensitive to this.

The traditional solution is to push lots of fresh air into the tent and/or vent the stale air out. There are a couple of problems with this, in my case:

1. I'm growing in a basement room, and my house is largely closed up for winter. This means elevated CO₂ in the ambient air. Pushing that into the tent might not help as much as real "fresh air" would. Soon, my only source of "fresh air" will be sub-zero.
2. Pushing fresh air drops the humidity, which is also an essential factor for proper growth, so my fight to keep CO₂ down will directly harm my fight to keep RH up.
3. I'm already pushing a gentle flow of air 24x7 with a small fan. Apparently this is not enough, possibly because of problem # 1.

So, I was thinking of experimenting with CO₂ scrubbing. If I can't get enough fresh air in to flush out the CO₂, maybe I can just remove the CO₂ from the standing air. Saltwater fish keepers already use small CO₂ scrubbers on the air intakes of their skimmers, to avoid dissolving atmospheric CO₂ into the water (thus lowering the pH due to the creation of carbonic acid). All that's required is a small canister of soda lime granules (as used by SCUBA and medical re-breathers) to cycle the air through.

Commercial units look like this, but it's really just a water filtration canister with a refillable insert. I can get that online for ~$25. So, I'm inclined to give it a try. The only thing that gives me pause is that I can't find much evidence that anyone else has tried this before, and there are people with much more intelligence and experience out there than I possess. If it's effective, I'd expect it to be a more commonplace solution. What do you guys think?

#mushrooms #fungi #carbondioxide #CO₂ #CO2 #saltwater #reefkeeping #corals #chemistry

Amanita muscaria guessowii spore print. Abe Lincoln for scale.

#mushrooms #fungi #amanita

I'm trying to disassemble my wife's elliptical machine to troubleshoot an unhealthy noise it's making, but I encountered this. I loosed the bolt, but it does not want to budge, even a little. I'm guessing that square pin has something to do with it. Anyone know how to get past one of these?

#repair #hardware #tools #diy

A. muscaria guessowii growing on the neighbor's lawn under a row of conifers. One had a flattened cap the size of a salad plate.

#mushrooms #fungi #amanita #flyagaric #psychedelic #1UP #photo #mywork

Indoor brick.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xcvo80MFO0I

#leomoracchioli #prodigy #metal #cover #music

Looking for a suggestion: I'm working on a web app that displays some information scraped from the underlying system on a periodic basis. All that's important is the most recent data, so storing it in SQL tables (and doing all the work keep them up to date) is a lot of work. However, I also need something that I can query/filter with to retrieve subsets of the data. What's the right tool for the job?

#data #databases #sql #programming #suggestions

The wife and I just finished watching The Terror. It's got a great cast, and if you're into stories where things only go badly, check it out.

#theterror #horror #historicalfiction #ageofsail #franklinexpedition

The wooden plugs I innoculated with shiitake are developing very slowly but I can't wait any longer to get the logs started, both because they need to be used while they're still relatively fresh and they need time to establish before the temps drop below freezing. All I had as an alternative was grain spawn, which was tedious work to pack into the holes by hand and made a big mess. It will be about a year before I know if I was successful.

#mushrooms #shiitake #outdoors

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Both Sides

#smbc #comics #saturdaymorningbreakfastcereal
posted by pod_feeder_v2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Wn9j4sQB8

#metallica #davidbowie #cover

Do you ever wake up in the dark on the tail of a weird anxiety dream and ponder how infinitesimally small we are in the vastness of the cosmos, and how seemingly futile all of our actions are and what is consciousness anyway and why have we been cursed with it?

Yeah, me neither.

I just started watching The Orville, and if you take out the jokes it's pretty much straight Star Trek fan-fiction.

#theorville #startrek

I've been watching The Boys, and it's clear that "The Seven" are meant to be an analog of the Justice League, but my knowledge of DC comics is pretty limited, so I'm having a hard time mapping them all.

Homelander ~ Superman
Queen Maeve ~ Wonder Woman
Black Noir ~ Batman
A-Train ~ The Flash
The Deep ~ Aquaman
Lamplighter ~ Green Lantern
Translucent ~ ???
Starlight ~ ???

Any help?

#theboys #comics #dccomics

A LEGITIMATE SALVAGE

😂😂😂

#theexpanse #screencap

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9LrZiNOvp_c

#theexpanse

I'm not partial to the martial
Or the plutocrats, in their beaver hats
And the fascists have the outfits
But I don't care for the outfits
What I care about is music
And the communists have the music

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7A2-ACZhg_g

#tmbg #theymightbegiants #music #communists

I just found out that TMBG released a new album a few months ago, and also that it features Corn Mo. I saw him back in the late 90s/early 2000s in a live burlesque show and I never forgot about him. That's awesome.

#tmbg #theymightbegiants #cornmo

I'm probably super late to the party here, but I really like this song/video. The sound reminds me somewhat of (a mellower version of) Marylin Manson's The Beautiful People.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HUHC9tYz8ik

#billieeilish

Contagious cancer? 😲 I had no idea that was a thing.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-6000-year-old-dog-cancer-spread-around-the-world/

#wired #cancer #medicine #biology #genetics #dogs