Well, with Putin suddenly deciding to unveil his newest intercontinental dildos, I doubt even the orange rapey puffball could have stood against the urges of the military industrial complex. This is it folks, we’re once again comparing explosive rage boners for sport, what fun!

Humans are interesting, a little disappointing, but interesting nonetheless…

I juried a case regarding long term care, and I have to say that some businesses definitely treat their patients as numbers. While this is not what happened in the case I juried, I do know that in many states elderly care has gotten so bad that some clinics will intentionally misdiagnose and mistreat elderly patients for no other reason than to keep rooms filled.

On the other hand, I have heard people ask that question, answered yes, and then checked my receipt later to find out that I just handed $0.57 to round out the cashier’s drawer.

This, many times over, this.

This is good, very good. That reminds me, I wonder if r/HostileArchitecture is going to or has arrive(d) in the fediverse…

I use LibreOffice! Calc, Draw, and Writer are very user friendly once you get used to where the tools are. Impress is a pretty good replacement for Powerpoint: the stock graphics leave a lot to be desired–but that’s a simple fix with a good stock image service. About the only thing LO doesn’t do is notes, but I’d check out Xournal++ if you were looking for a way to replace OneNote. Plus, LibreOffice doesn’t push OneDrive down your throat. It’s been a win-win for me.

Another thing to consider if you really like typesetting is to learn LaTeX: it’s a slightly steep learning curve(especially for advanced topics), but it’ll do things that your typical WYSIWYG word-processing suite couldn’t dream of doing. Plus there are a lot of templates available that you can adapt for your purposes.

Oh, that’s a great idea! I’m clearly new to mycology, so I’m just kind-of experimenting–but you’re right, we’re talking billions of spores, and only two need to meet in order to form a strain. Hmm…

I used the tip of a specialized tooth-brush, and I dipped it into water and then swiped-up spores from the sample. I wouldn’t recommend it though, because it turns out the brush fibers are too stiff and caught on the agar, pulling the plate around. It’s probably better just to stick to swabs and use the same method.

Side thought: a lot of people recommend the z-shape swabbing, but it seems kind-of counterproductive if you’re trying to select for the apparent speed and strength of mycelium growth.

Oh that is very interesting! I guess the main way that they decompose is through PHA depolymerase–according to ChatGPT a lot of the species that have been tested in the decomposition of PHA are bacteria. It would be interesting to try inoculating some samples of PHA with different mushroom species as well. It would be really great if PHA could be fully-decomposed into proper food-safe compost.