this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 50 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

"Why do we eat the fungi that taste good and not the ones that give you explosive diarrhea?"

[โ€“] Meron35@lemmy.world 26 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Humans: ๐Ÿคฎ

Human genitalia: ๐Ÿ†๐Ÿ’จ๐Ÿ‘ƒ๐Ÿคค

[โ€“] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 64 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Some moulds are totally fine, see blue cheese. Some mycelium schlongs are dangerous, see death caps.

[โ€“] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 24 points 3 days ago

"Mycelium schlong"

Linguistic creativity at its best.

[โ€“] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

You can also put mold on meat. Lot trickier, but the famous Hungarian salami Tรฉliszalรกmi (Winter Salami) is done like that.

[โ€“] match@pawb.social 5 points 3 days ago

See also other soft cheeses like brie

[โ€“] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 191 points 4 days ago (4 children)

99% of mold gives humans something between mild discomfort and death. The remaining 1% tastes good with butter.

[โ€“] then_three_more@lemmy.world 93 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Not quiet

98.99% of mold gives humans something between mild discomfort and death, 1% tastes good with butter. The the remaining 0.01% is estimated to have saved over half a billion lives.

[โ€“] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 62 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And 0.00001% makes me see and feel funny things

[โ€“] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 29 points 4 days ago

More of them do that, but only once.

[โ€“] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 26 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Pretty sure the antibiotics also taste good with butter.

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[โ€“] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 43 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ah, so there are 3 options- discomfort, death, and nutrition. Therefore, every time you eat a fungus, you have a 1/3 chance of dying. Thanks for the info!

[โ€“] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 4 days ago (4 children)
[โ€“] RiceMunk@sopuli.xyz 43 points 4 days ago (1 children)

True; some mold is actually medicine. Therefore you only have 1/4 chance of dying.

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[โ€“] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 26 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah? Then successfully explain how statistics work, smart guy. But I warn you, thereโ€™s a 50% chance youโ€™ll fail.

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[โ€“] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 33 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The Roquefort (French blue cheese) is made from the mold that grows on rye bread.

So even the moldy bread, in the right condition, can become a delicacy.

[โ€“] Taleya@aussie.zone 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

lactobacillus is everywhere. Truly the king of kings.

Yo, thank you to yogurt, sourdough, and various fermented beverages. Bless.

[โ€“] interpolate@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

On typing this out, I'm suddenly concerned about this being offensive or blatantly false. I never applied critical thought to the story before, as I'm pretty sure I was told it as a relatively young, and more relevantly gullible, man.

Is it true that this mold played a role in the "witches ride broomsticks" stereotype?

edit: Removed redundant word.

[โ€“] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It sounds like a few different things got mashed together there. Ergot is a hallucinogenic fungus that grows on rye, and is speculated to be the cause of some of the witch panics. It's not the same fungus found in Roquefort, but it is what they use to make LSD.

Witches flying is hypothesized to be entheogen use, since a common side effect is feelings of floating, flying, or otherwise 'being high'.

[โ€“] interpolate@lemm.ee 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Ah, I looked it up and accepted "rye bread" without actually reading the name of the fungus, so you're probably right about that part.

The broomstick myth that I've heard does indeed involve substance abuse to achieve an altered state of mind. The broomstick specific part was because apparently some women would put the substance on the end of a broomstick and apply it, shall we say, internally, thinking that this would achieve greater (or perhaps faster) effect. I don't know whether entheogen was the material in question.

As initially mentioned, I make no claim that this is true, only that I read it a long time ago and never really questioned it.

edit: Forgot to thank you for the clearly knowledgeable response!

[โ€“] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago

I donโ€™t know whether entheogen was the material in question.

En-theo-gen, where 'theo' is the same as 'theology', roughly means 'to commune with god', so it's any psychoactive substance used religiously. It covers everything from the wine in christian communion to a witch's psychoactive sybian, haha.

Forgot to thank you for the clearly knowledgeable response!

Any time!

[โ€“] AgentOrangesicle@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The fungus you're thinking of is likely ergot, because it shows up in pretty large volume in batches of rye.

In processing, it ends up as a dark purple/black dried up mass that assumes kinda a crescent shape. Mills will run a batch of rye through a color-sorter - a bunch of times consecutively - to reduce the amount of ergot in the batch before milling.

You can technically refine it into LSD, but if you screw up, you can kill people. (Morning Glories are the preferred method).

The number of 55-gallon drums of ergot I've disposed of, though... It's difficult not to identify with Walter White and wonder... "what if?"

[โ€“] ZeffSyde@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Iirc the psychoactive compound in ergot/morning glories is LSA, which is similar, but different from LSD. LSD is a refined version of LSA.

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[โ€“] kibiz0r@midwest.social 126 points 4 days ago (4 children)

No one:

Everyone: adds a pointless โ€œNo one:โ€ above perfectly valid memes

[โ€“] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 38 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And on top of that, a pointless Twitter comment.

I swear, every meme nowadays is three levels of reaction deep.

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[โ€“] Klear@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

POV: Someone added a useless "no one" to their meme

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[โ€“] the_artic_one@programming.dev 97 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Most molds are about as closely related to mushrooms as flatworms are to humans

[โ€“] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Not to be confused with ringworms which are, in fact, a mold.

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[โ€“] herrwoland@lemmy.world 71 points 4 days ago (3 children)

"why is that we eat the fruit and not the tree?"

[โ€“] MTK@lemmy.world 47 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Both are pictures of genitalia, one of them is just really really small, microscopic even, so you are being very insensitive towards the microscopic genitalia.

[โ€“] Wetstew@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

It doesn't need to be big to do it's job!๐Ÿ˜ก

[โ€“] Nfamwap@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

I feel seen

[โ€“] NotLemming@lemm.ee 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Wait I thought mushrooms were the flowers... Or are you telling me that flowers are also genitals??!! ๐Ÿ’ฅ

[โ€“] echodot@feddit.uk 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Flowers are flowers genitals as well.

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[โ€“] StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yep lol just wait till you find out what pollen is analogous too lol

[โ€“] NotLemming@lemm.ee 35 points 3 days ago (8 children)

So bees are slutty sex pests and fly around covered in plant cum...

[โ€“] StinkySocialist@lemmy.ml 24 points 3 days ago

Yes... But technically they're performing In Bee-tro fertilization (IBF) .... I'll show myself out

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[โ€“] Diddlydee@feddit.uk 49 points 4 days ago

Blue cheese would like a word.

[โ€“] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 49 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Whoa there... We eat mold too if they're the right type and on the right things.

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[โ€“] rtxn@lemmy.world 37 points 4 days ago

This bacterium gives me the sniffles. This other bacterium liquefies and eats my muscles. But if I don't have enough of this other bacterium in me, I get violent explosive shits??

[โ€“] sunbather@beehaw.org 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

the difference between eating mushrooms and eating mold is the difference between oral sex and vore

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[โ€“] Gladaed@feddit.org 9 points 3 days ago

If the french eat frogs that's fine, but when the south Americans do it everyone loses their minds.

(Poison dart frogs)

[โ€“] wittycomputer@feddit.org 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I prefer calling it flowers than genitallia

[โ€“] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 13 points 3 days ago

Some women also call it their flowers and yeah I go down on flowers. :finger-guns:

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[โ€“] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Cheese and yoghurt enter the chat.

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