Cities like Detroit and Buffalo position themselves as the best place to live in the USA today due to their cheap homes and lack of natural disasters.
![America's cities are vying for a hot new title: best place to ride out the coming dystopia](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/e3796d18-1852-4e9b-a6f1-4a9786f389b4.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Welp I guess this is what the pivot from "it's not gonna be that bad" to "oh gosh we're fucked" looks like in the popular press
President Joe Biden said he believes there should be a pause in the Israel-Gaza conflict to get the hostages out.
![Biden calls for 'pause' in Israel-Gaza conflict to get hostages out](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/c23e399c-b552-474c-8fd0-602ab643f86b.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Have you wanted to grow mushrooms but didn't know where to start? Here's a relatively easy and foolproof technique that doesn't require equipment or sterilization and can be done in an afternoon.
MATERIALS: Mushroom spawn - the two types that work well for this are oyster mushrooms (any variety, although given that oyster mushrooms tend to be copious spore producers and the spores are known for causing health problems, sporeless oysters are best for indoors/small spaces) and what's known as bear's head or lion's mane. The latter produces a shaggy ball-shaped mushroom and is enjoying a moment right now because it helps keep nerves healthy. It's also darn tasty and can be enjoyed in stir fries and sushi (if cooked!). Pioppino might also do well in this setup, but I have never tried it. Mushroom spawn can be purchased online. I like Field & Forest Products as a supplier.
Yesterday's News Kitty Litter: made from pelletized newspaper, do not substitute feline pine or other wood-based brands
Guinea Pig Chow: you want pelletized Timothy hay
Dechlorinated Water - Hot water out of the faucet that has been allowed to cool works, so does distilled or filtered water, or tap water that has been brought to a boil and allowed to cool. You need 4 cups per batch.
Newspaper Bags: any tube shaped plastic bag will do. Small mushroom grow bags are available on Amazon and also work well.
A clean plastic tub for mixing (for best results wipe out beforehand with hydrogen peroxide or a 1:10 bleach dilution)
METHOD
Making the artificial log: Using clean or gloved hands, mix 4 cups of yesterday's news, two handfuls of guinea pig chow, and 4 cups of water until the water is fully incorporated. Add in about a cup of spawn (less works, but it is slightly riskier), breaking up the clumps with your fingers. Scoop the inoculated medium into your bag, tap on the counter a couple times to pack it down, then tie it off.
Spawn Run: Over the course of the next couple of weeks, the mushroom spawn will colonize the artificial logs, causing the medium to become cohesive and whitish in color. If you see green, powdery growth, you have trichoderma contamination and should discard. Black splotches are mold and also a sign your log is compromised.
Fruiting: Oxygen is the trigger to switch over from vegetative growth to making mushrooms. Tiny pinheads called primordia will often form in places where there's gaps between substrate and bag; you can look for them and make small x cuts in the bag with a pair of scissors, or you can just pierce the bag in regular intervals on one side. Keeping the bag in a humid environment, placing it in a shopping bag, or misting it regularly can improve yield. Once the mushrooms are mature, you can harvest them (ideally before they drop a lot of spores). If you're growing bear's head, the tips starting to yellow is a sign that the fruiting body is done growing.
A second flush can be obtained by soaking the bags in dechlorinated water for at least a couple of hours. Expect 1-2 pounds of yield from each bag.
WHY IT WORKS
The mushrooms we're growing here are known as white rot fungi and have been evolutionary honed to tolerate wood, a growing medium that most other decomposers hate because it's low in nitrogen and high in forms of carbohydrate that are difficult to break down. White rot fungi are not really used to competitors and are happy to take their time, which means that they can spend years breaking down a log before deciding to fruit. This is disadvantageous from a less patient human cultivator's point of view.
We can speed the process up by offering tastier forms of nutrition, but that will attract faster-growing fungi who can muscle out our target species. Thus, growing mushrooms successfully without contamination requires either an environment more suited to the target mushroom than faster-growing competitors (that is, it is relatively low in nutrients), or a rigorous commitment to ensuring the competitors are kept out of the medium. We take a hybrid approach here: both the litter and the Timothy pellets are sterilized during manufacturing, so we don't have to worry as much about aseptic technique, but the resulting medium is still less nutritious than something designed for high yields, such as master's mix. Keeping the logs comparatively small and using a high spawn ratio also allows the edible mushroom to quickly complete a life cycle before any spores that have drifted in have a chance to get established, with the drawback of increasing cost per unit produced.
COST/MATERIAL CONSIDERATIONS
You're looking at roughly $80 - 100 in materials to get off the ground, with your main expense being the mushroom spawn. A 5 lb bag of spawn should be enough for 20 or so mini logs, so at $5/lb of mushrooms at the high end, you're beating the grocery store or farmer's market pretty handily. This is also a lot to make at once, and spawn does have a limited shelf life (although it can be stored in the fridge for a couple of weeks). High nutrient spawns like rye tend to get chewed through quickly and you can often find your spawn bags fruiting on their own (not necessarily the worst outcome).
If you're worried about waste and not sure where you'd keep 20 newspaper bags full of mycelium, consider splitting the cost with friends or making your own spawn in smaller batches. Spore/mycelium syringes for edible varieties are available online, and the popular and relatively reliable "Uncle Ben's tek" used for Psilocybes will also work for the more licit species of fungi. That's a post for another time, though.
OKAY I GREW SOME MUSHROOMS, NOW WHAT?
Spent logs can theoretically be used to spawn new ones, although the chances for contamination go up and yields can decline over time. They can also be composted or tossed on a log pile to see if you get some mushrooms the natural way.
It's amazing how much gains you can get from a simple linear progression - just keep upping the weight a little bit each time and de-load 10-20% when you can't hit five clean reps and you'll be double that in the space of a couple months.
Finally started lifting weights again after a long hiatus, doubled my weekly bike miles after getting a bike that doesn't make my back hurt (although I'm going to miss the old one - sweet classic steel road bike). Looking forward to being able to do some gravel rides!
Have it with my compliments!
Me deciding to work in climate adaptation: "Sure, things aren't looking good but at least I can do something that makes a difference."
Me getting the requisite education: "Okay, the best time to act would have been two decades ago but there are still opportunities to avert the worst of the consequences."
Me working in climate adaptation: "Holy fuck we have zero idea of the hell we are unleashing upon ourselves."
Honestly hexbear is the best place I've found to commiserate because at least people are willing to acknowledge the existence and scope of the problem, but even here I try to keep the extent of my bleakness under some wraps because I don't want to be that guy (even though I'd imagine I'm 90% that guy). And I've shouldered just a small fraction of the burden climate scientists must be feeling. If you see one, give 'em a hug because they probably need it. We're in for a rough future and the ones who had the power to prevent it but chose not to are going to die safe and comfortable in their beds and that is a damn shame.
Still feeling like I should've just become a musician or a hermit pottery gnome or something.
Fun fact, basically the entire history of botany up until the early 20th century consists of nerds traveling the world and naming what they find after their junk.
Nobody can say we didn't see it coming.
More than a 2-degree increase should be unimaginable. Yet to stop at 2 degrees, global emissions have to peak in 2016.
Peacock spiders! Look at the li'l guy go:
Just get a job that allows you to afford the PC hardware to run the latest games and then never turn it on because you're too busy.
It's a little more complicated than that because there are statistical analyses that they do based on the survey sample; essentially you could answer yes to the bottom or to several of the top questions (but not all) and end up in the severely food insecure category. As it stands, the subjective nature of the questionnaire means we're probably looking at an undercount. Hope things are going okay for you.
Yeah, the disruption of trade in both grain and fertilizers (Russia and Belarus are large sources of synthetic nitrogen) were major issues. International price volatility hits especially hard in Africa.
It's based on a weighted score of the yes answers, with the weights increasing as you go down the scale.
Answering that would make this a very high effort post - individual country breakdowns are little bit challenging because (a) FAO has a lot of holes, although the data are probably out there somewhere* and (b) because while governance has to be playing a role, we're also seeing the early effects of climate change in countries like Pakistan (one of the most vulnerable countries in one of the most sensitive regions), which got hit with massive flooding that disrupted its wheat production. Having access to internationally traded commodities (both at the national and individual level) is becoming increasingly important as the scale of production shocks increases and the need to cover production shortfalls increases. In general, South Asia is driving much of the post-2021 recovery for Asia as region because it started at a significantly higher rate of insecurity while Eastern and South-Eastern Asia started significantly lower and generally stayed that way.
*From the report, China's prevalence of undernourishment dropped from 7.5% to <2.5% between 2004-06 and 2020-22, Mongolia dropped from 28.8% to 8% (not sure what was going on there!) and DPRK rose from 34.3 to 45.5 (I'm assuming markets played a role). Meanwhile Afghanistan's proportion of severely undernourished almost doubled between 2014-16 and 2020-22, no prizes for guessing what happened there.
![the background blur](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/ea89745d-62da-4e91-a849-15daf06948a6.png?thumbnail=256&format=webp)
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/ea89745d-62da-4e91-a849-15daf06948a6.png?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
This is a moderate-ish effort post about the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's State of Food Insecurity report, which is showing some grim news for some regions, Africa in particular. The results in the graph are from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale, a simple questionnaire that asks the following questions: ``` During the last 12 months, was there a time when, because of lack of money or other resources:
- You were worried you would not have enough food to eat?
- You were unable to eat healthy and nutritious food?
- You ate only a few kinds of foods?
- You had to skip a meal?
- You ate less than you thought you should?
- Your household ran out of food?
- You were hungry but did not eat?
- You went without eating for a whole day? ``` There's some some obvious criticisms about how effective this questionnaire is at understanding food insecurity (especially in the nominally calorically sufficient west), the first being the somewhat subjective nature of the experience and the second being that it likely underestimates "hidden hunger" or having sufficient access to calories but not to adequate nutrition that can underlie conditions like being overweight or obese.
Based on the FAO's surveys Asia and Latin America appear to be trending back down from their pandemic spikes, but hunger in Africa has trended upward unabated. Likely issues include the continued importance of subsistence agriculture for nutrition among lower-income households, disruption of imports of grain and fertilizer due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict (most small farms in Africa are engaged in nutrient mining, meaning they take more nutrients off the soil from harvests than are replenished through fertilizers and natural processes), lack of postharvest storage (forcing producers to sell their crops when prices are low at harvest and then rebuying when prices are high during the off season), conflict (including farmer-herder conflict; climate change is shifting the areas where forage is available for pastoralists), continued high rainfall variability and its attendant consequences, and the continued fragmentation of small farms as land gets subdivided among more and more people. An increasing share of African small farms are no longer on land areas large enough to sustain an average household given current yields.
tl;dr !pinker and his ilk can shove it, things are getting worse for a lot of people, we have enough food but its production and distribution are highly uneven, fuck systems that allow people to starve in the midst of abundance.
Retires? They're going to string her skeleton up with wires and puppet it around like a marionette for the next fifty years minimum.
Immunity to smallpox is a good way to ensure you're the last one standing. Never underestimate the power of poor hygiene and living in close proximity to livestock.
Looks like it could be a Xerula although I'm not sure from that pic alone. They're a pretty common lawn mushroom and good eatin', with a nice light, almost citrussy flavor.
Spent my early years with a phobia of the landstriders from The Dark Crystal and zero clue about what the plot was.
Researchers of Chinese descent are leaving the US 75% faster since state-backed espionage investigations began in 2018
![Scientists of Chinese descent leaving the US at an accelerating pace](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/0YOwqDL2ux.jpg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
![the background blur](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/d6a009cd-651a-4806-ad90-2bcd09b51a64.jpeg?thumbnail=256&format=webp)
![](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/d6a009cd-651a-4806-ad90-2bcd09b51a64.jpeg?thumbnail=1024&format=webp)
Remember to engage with freedom in both your lives
"This can only end well," said anyone who has ever ridden a bike through traffic, ever.
![Road Design That Sends Cars Into Bike Lanes Demonstrated For The First Time In Michigan](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/50244bb8-8689-40f6-92b7-f7d7387430a3.png?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Whence comes this compulsive need among drivers to have access to every single square inch of pavement