[HN Gopher] Hackers, Mason Jars, and the Psychedelic Science of ...
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       Hackers, Mason Jars, and the Psychedelic Science of DIY Shrooms
        
       Author : jelliclesfarm
       Score  : 66 points
       Date   : 2021-03-10 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
        
       | throwawaypftek wrote:
       | What's the current best resource for this? Long ago it was
       | pressure cookers and mason jars and even an aquarium! Is there a
       | more streamlined simpler process now?
        
         | RickS wrote:
         | r/unclebens for sure
        
       | h2odragon wrote:
       | Careful; shrooms are fun and rewarding just as a hobby, and may
       | be a gateway drug leading to pressure canning your own foods, and
       | / or having a pet slime mold.
        
         | bergesenha wrote:
         | I can vouch for this. I recently had a wonderful experience
         | spanning a few months cultivating Psylocybe cubensis by
         | salvaging spores from a bag of dried shrooms (spore prints are
         | as illegal as the shrooms themselves here and really hard to
         | come by). Coming from a physics background and never really
         | having done work on living things it was almost magical
         | watching the spores germinate on agar plates, transfering
         | healthy mycelium away from contamination onto new clean plates,
         | colonizing grain with the resulting mycelium and in the end
         | fruiting several healthy flushes in a small plastic container
         | in my cupboard. You really just need a kitchen and some
         | commonly available groceries. I'm now cloning store-bought
         | edible mushrooms and planning to grow enough for my own dinners
         | throughout the warmer season. It's a very rewarding hobby.
        
       | RickS wrote:
       | Neat article, but inaccurate.
       | 
       | >...tailored to one species in particular, the most potent and
       | easiest to cultivate: Psilocybe cubensis.
       | 
       | Wrong re:potency. cubes are ~50% the strength of the heavy
       | hitters like p.azuresens & p.cyanescens (sp). But right about
       | cultivation: the strength gains are negated by their extremely
       | fickle fruiting habits. People grow cubes because they fruit in
       | abundance indoors.
       | 
       | Mason jars are a thing of the past as well. r/unclebens really
       | changed the game in the last few years. $2 ready rice is an off-
       | the-shelf version of the DIY jar: a damp, nutritious,
       | industrially sterilized colonization environment.
        
       | barbacoa wrote:
       | I miss the days when some 15 year old could just start a website
       | for mischievous/conversational interests and it could go on to
       | become popular. If you tried to start anything like that today
       | you would be de-listed from google search engine, kicked off AWS,
       | and black listed from ad revenue.
        
         | scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
         | Well, I learned everything I needed to know about mushroom
         | growing over the past two years from what sounds like a 16 year
         | old on YT. It doesn't seem like direct ad revenue or listing is
         | the goal for these kids. It's only about sharing knowledge and
         | passion. The other more serious ones make money by making deals
         | directly with the companies who's products they show off,
         | without YT's participation.
         | 
         | Not that I disagree - it just seems to me that video is the
         | medium of today's internet.
        
           | heavyset_go wrote:
           | > _It's only about sharing knowledge and passion._
           | 
           | This is what made Paul Stamets such an icon before the age of
           | YouTube.
        
           | RickS wrote:
           | Agreed - the info is readily available, but to the GP's
           | point, it's fighting an uphill battle against soft
           | censorship. Subreddits have to tread carefully to avoid bans,
           | and YT videos are frequently put behind login walls for
           | content reasons.
        
       | gridder wrote:
       | As a Cluster Headache sufferer I would like to remind everybody
       | this is the only cure. https://clusterbusters.org/
        
       | hirundo wrote:
       | I recommend this hobby to the neurotic, depressed and phobic. A
       | psilocybin trip isn't always pleasant, and any kind of gardening
       | takes time and effort, but the risks are relatively low
       | (comparable to antidepressants, etc.?) and the potential rewards
       | in terms of inner peace are high.
       | 
       | It's also a blast to watch 'em pop up, the rapid endgame of a
       | drama that intensifies over weeks.
       | 
       | As I understand it, if you don't desiccate them the legal risks
       | are quite low. Given their benefits it's a crying shame that you
       | can't buy these over the counter at the local store. This is so
       | much less a substance of abuse than so many of the other things
       | they sell.
        
         | aqme28 wrote:
         | Interesting. Why is it riskier when you desiccate them,
         | assuming you aren't selling them either way.
        
           | hirundo wrote:
           | IANAL. As I understand it the possession of dried shrooms is
           | much less ambiguously illegal than fresh shrooms. It varies
           | widely between states. In mine a rare prosecution for
           | possession of fresh shrooms failed due to that ambiguity.
           | 
           | https://www.inverse.com/article/7772-magic-mushrooms-are-
           | leg...
        
             | uoaei wrote:
             | In most jurisdictions in the US, cultivated [psychoactive]
             | mushrooms of any form are illegal. In some jurisdictions,
             | spores are legal for microscopy only, but as soon as you
             | cultivate them the organic mass becomes illegal.
        
       | aqme28 wrote:
       | A lot of people nowadays just inject their spores into ready-made
       | bags of rice such as Uncle Ben's so they can skip most of the
       | sterilization process. Surprised the article didn't mention it.
        
       | jmcgough wrote:
       | Used shroomery + PF tek in college, it cost around $100 and half
       | was on a pressure cooker for sterilizing jars. For someone who
       | struggled with depression at the time, it broke through in ways
       | that SSRIs failed to. It also was my gateway into non-psychedlic
       | mycology: growing mushrooms is fun, and I love cooking with them
       | now.
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-10 23:03 UTC)