I used to be a Youtuber. For 3 or so years I made my living by making videos, and outsourcing my editing skills to bigger youtube channels.

In that capacity, I suppose I was successful. But I never reached the level of success I hoped I would, and for that I feel like a failure.

Now I revisit those memories and feelings as I venture into a podcasting project with my wife, and I'm constantly left with a nagging feeling like I will fail because I dont have what it takes, and never did.

@Shadow298 I'll just claim those things as also belonging to me.

@MindfulWilliam @leturos love that. I planted 3 apple trees in my front yard, and the rest is shaded forest. I hope to have more edible plants one day. Little by little when I have the time.

@MindfulWilliam @leturos I dont use it for anything but marketplace. But maybe craigslist still works? 🤔 also there is offerup and a few other similar local marketplace apps.

@MindfulWilliam @leturos I'm lucky in that respect. Lots of house for little mushrooms. I hope to scale up to a 5' by 10' tent when I'm ready to start doing this on a bigger level, and I have a huge workshop above my garage that could be all I need to grow 500 to 800lbs a week. Tough part is finding people to buy them all.

@MindfulWilliam @leturos you could also check facebook market place for saw dust. I found a number of sawmills and workshops that are giving it away, and will sometimes deliver a dumptruck load for a small fee. They want to get rid of it. For now I'm just using hardwood fuel pellets and soy hulls. Its simple and predictable, and until I have my skills leveled up, they provide easy repeatable results.

@leturos @MindfulWilliam in case anyone is curious what my setup looks like. I have a very nice Lions mane block growing, and just added a few king oyster blocks that I think dried out and stopped growing. I hope the humidity will bring them back to life, if not, they'll go to the compost pile.

@KodoAndSangha I actually haven't tried any of the coffees, but I have been know to throw a scoop of mushroom powders into my coffee in the morning. 10/10

@MindfulWilliam @leturos actually there is a lot of information about growing in urban environments, and its actually a super sustainable food source for urban farms because it uses waste byproducts, low energy and water consumption and can grow in limited space. Some people are using (with great success) used coffee grounds they get from coffee shops.

Many mushroom growers, to supplement their income, have started projects to start urban mushroom farms.

@KodoAndSangha Not sure, but I've already seen comments like "that one of the main ingredients in a lot of health supplents." And "OMG people are eating this willingly?"

People already think its bad for us. Its only a matter of time before someone in the GOP opens some clickbait about what cordyceps does to insects and orders all mushrooms be banned.

@leturos @MindfulWilliam they do grow well on it. Most used a mix of manure and wheat straw, but its not unheard of to hear people use sawdust. I've heard some people have great results with coco coir, which seems more up my alley.

@leturos its never too late. Thats what I'm doing. In the next year, after I hone my skills and build my ultimate grow tent I hope to run it as a business and quit my paving job. Fingers crossed

@MindfulWilliam @leturos there are a few mushrooms that will grow on soft wood, but I struggle to remember which ones. Might be looking into. Otherwise be sure to mulch a seperate pile for hardwood, as more wood loving mushrooms prefer that. Best of luck, outdoor mushroom beds always seemed too daunting for me.

@ContentWarningVirusB42 this is true. I would not eat a Destroying Angel. That said, Amanita Muscaria is still listed as a poisonous mushroom despite having incredible medicinal compounds. Maybe there just hasn't been enough research into the Destroying Angel, or other poisonous plants and fungi.

Someone once said to me, in regards to the Amanita, "If you took a whole bottle of aspirin, you would probably think it was poisonous too. The problem is dosage."

@leturos they can be very expensive. Cordyceps itself is one of the most expensive mushrooms in the world at $1200 to $600 a lb dry.

Granted, they are very small and take months to grow. But also, you only need like a quarter teaspoon a day at most. In fact, that is probably a huge dosage.

I dont think that they boost out health, or alter our states of mind. I think we have just been mushroom deficient. Now we are rediscovering them and talking about how great they are like its something new, like they haven't been doing this with us for millions of years.

Its like if I just discovered vegetables and started talking about all the medicinal benefits of broccoli 🥦.

Eat more mushrooms. Eat a variety of them. The mycellium want you to, its why they grow them.

I have a theory, and its a pretty good one.

Mushrooms are the oldest form of life on this planet. Long before the dinosaurs, there were forests of giant mushrooms. We came from them, and we evolved with them. They created medicinal compounds that we ate and in time they started to change us. The mushrooms and us became codependent.

In the last 1000 years, we rejected mushrooms, and lost these compounds in our diet.

Combine cordyceps with lions man, turkeytail, reishi and chaga, and you have a powerful combination of compounds that will change your life, even if you think you're at peak performance.

If people continue to be afraid of these things, reject them, dismiss their value, then we are living in the dark age dispite the lights being on. Dispite having access to all of human kinds wealth of knowledge at our fingertips.

Cordyceps has been proven to increase energy on a cellular level, lower bloodsugar and treat type 2 diabetes, inhibit cancer cell growth, provide antivirals and even fight hiv, increase oxygen levels in blood, lower lactic acid in muscle fibers, contains adaptagens that help your body deal with stress, lowers cholesterol, increases focus and energy and the list goes on.

And now people think it will turn them into a zombie if they eat it. Great. Fantastic progress.

Rant: As a zombie fan I love 'The last of us'. As a mushroom fan I hate it.

The amount of mycophobia I have seen as a result of the show has been enormous towards one of the most potent medicinal mushrooms on the planet.

I dont blame the show, mycophobia is a problem that goes back hundreds of years, when christianity and colonization erased our ancestral knowledge and rejected anything that was even vaguely non-christian.

Mushrooms were poison, evil, magic, pagan and many other phobic words.