A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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People who have accidentally eaten death cap mushrooms (amanita phalloides for the autists out there) say that it's fucking delicious (before their liver shuts down). Rabbits can eat them without problems. So if we use rabbit genes, we can crispr cas 9 our way to a good meal.
Not sure if the article is legit, but there is hope for an antidote: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-deadliest-mushroom-may-now-have-an-antidote/
I don't think we even need to do that, just extract the poison shit from the mushrooms and eat them poisonless?
Or determine what chemical (or combination of chemicals) is causing the delicious flavor, isolate them, and then add them to tofu or some shit.
Let's gooo
Aliens would extract our bile and earwax.
My precious bodily fluids!!
Rain water and grain alcohol for me
Goddamn I need to watch it again.
Sooo actually why land mammals can't filter out salt from seawater?
Actually if you are on a raft with a limited amount of fresh water, you can mix in some sea water to stretch it out a bit. I think if you use a third seawater its ok, but don't quote me on that.
Erm, if im on a raft im gonna be quoting you so you better be right.
PSA: if you're on a remote island or dysfunctional yet floating ship do not abandon it unless truly necessary - raft will be always more dangerous
Rhubarb: most of me is poison. The rest of me is kind of bitter.
Humans: Hold my pie crust.
Rhubarb crumble is legitimately delicious though.
Don't get me wrong, I love rhubarb. But whoever first figured out it was edible must have been desperate.
Strawberry rhubarb :)
Polk salet, anybody?
The best bit about the mint and chocolate thing is that chocolate is also poison, so we spice up our poison with more poison.
All valid Points. But also, humans: i will care for this plant and create huge fields where you can live prosper and in peace. We kill everything who comes near you and try to harm you. And we will ensure you will live forever. You dont need birds who shit your seeds out.
Those plants domesticared us!
Sidenote: monocultures are devastating, long-term.
Also humans: we will breed you until your fruit no longer bears seed, because we decide when and how you reproduce
Completely unrelated but JLD is so freakin' gorgeous in this pic.
Funnily enough we try to cultivate everything we like, so in a roundabout way they were successful.
I guess... If you consider factory farmed chickens to be "successful."
I think the book Sapiens makes the point that wheat has trained us into cultivating it for selfish needs.
(Except that it's wheat, and that we annihilated 99% of its brethren to pick out the one that we liked so we could effectively clone it. But yes, we are the slaves...)
Don't forget...
Yeast: oh man I love sugars so much, I just wish they didn't make me shit so bad.
Humans: dude this stuff is fucking awesome!
Yeast in sugar is going: I'll just convert this to poison (ethanol) to keep everything away, then whenever I'm hungry I'll break that poison into acid
Humans: hold my... Wait a minute let's make beer!
Parrots: tasty tasty poison
Fruit flies: bonanza!
And if my yeasty poison goes bad, I'll just pour it over some poisonous leaves, I love salad.
Don't forget to season it with minerals you chipped off a rock in a dried out lake bed.
Nicotine, THC, and cocaine are also insecticides. And psilocybin might be an insect repellent.
Thanks poison!
Just imagine how many of these were first consumed on a drunken bet.
Would aliens actually be weirded out by this quality of humans?
I feel like any sufficiently intelligent species living on a planet will have some degree of biodiversity on said planet. And the chances of something being made to be a poison/deterrent for creatures other than the intelligent species is probably a large one, because it's pretty hard for plants and animals to make a poison/deterrent that kills everything without also killing itself. So if there is a gap for itself, there is a gap for other life to coexist with the toxin. And that's before accounting for the fact that something can be safe at low levels, provide benefits/stimulation/good feels at low levels, and toxic at high levels.
So I'd think it would be pretty natural for intelligent life to consume things that are harmful to huge swaths of other creatures.
Works best with the Earth-is-a-deathworld trope
Level 12 Deathworld.
Tbf, this has proven to be extremely effective: Just think of how many tobacco or chili plants are grown today! Domestication really is a two-way-street
I do would like to be an alien's pet.
Basically humans will have sex with you, eat you, or make you a pet.
Sometimes more than one.
Sometimes, when a fruit or seed isn't toxic enough for our taste, we make it liquid then make it ferment or age until some of its sugar turns into the deliciously neurotoxic ethanol.