#merlin sheldrake

[copperbadge]

So, you guys know Merlin Sheldrake, who went viral for publishing his massive book about mushrooms, using a copy to grow mushrooms, and then eating the mushrooms? Well, I got a copy of his book, Entangled Life, on one of my library apps recently. I figured it might help with the novel about Davzda and the hallucinogenic mushrooms that are used in making it.

It's engaging, but it's also very dense and meandered a bit, so I didn't end up finishing it. It's a bit like being trapped in a room with the most charismatic person ever to have a deeply neurodiverse hyperfixation on fungi. But also it contains random gems such as:

[ID: Text reading "A friend of mine, the philosopher and magician David Abram, used to be the house magician at Alice's Restaurant in Massacusetts (made famous by the Arlo Guthrie song)."]

That's so much to put into one sentence, Mr. Sheldrake.

And he drops a bunch of new genders (perhaps new sexualities?) so you all have fun:

[ID: Text reading "Some fungi have tens of thousands of mating types, approximately equivalent to our sexes (the record holder is the split gill fungus, Schizophyllum commune, which has more than 23,000 mating types, each of which is sexually compatible with nearly every one of the others.)"]

Amusingly for me mainly because of the Shivadhverse, he also manages to namedrop both a Theophile

and a LeFevre (Simon the chef's last name)

in the first hundred pages.

Anyway, fun book to drop into and out of, especially as an ebook; it feels like it might be a bit much to handle in person unless you are a fellow passionate mycologist.

[ID: Last two images feature quotes by the eighteenth century French physician Theophile de Bordeu, speaking on the scent of living organisms, and a truffle scientist and cultivator in Oregon named Charles Lefevre, who works with Perigord black truffles.]

#mushrooms #fungi #merlin sheldrake #shivadhverse

[tamvmat]

I made a lichen bookmark for reading this book

🍄💚🍄

Fascinating stuff.

#mycology #entangled life #books #merlin sheldrake

[bones-ivy-breath]

Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior, and influencing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave. Yet they live their lives largely hidden from view, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

#quote #entangled life #merlin sheldrake #literature #nature #ecology #fungus #mycology #original post #dark academia #light academia #green academia #fungi #mushrooms #earth

[mr-craig]

Spribille told me about a paper called ‘Queer theory for lichens’ (‘It comes up as the first thing in Google when you enter "queer" and "lichen"’). Its author argues that lichens are queer beings that present ways for humans to think beyond a rigid binary framework: the identity of lichens is a question, rather than an answer known in advance. In turn, Spribille has found queer theory a helpful framework to apply to lichens. ‘The human binary view has made it difficult to ask questions that aren't binary,’ he explained. ‘Our strictures about sexuality make it difficult to ask questions about sexuality, and so on. We ask questions from the perspective of our cultural context. And this makes it extremely difficult to ask questions about complex symbioses like lichens because we think of ourselves as autonomous individuals and so find it hard to relate.’

~ ‘Entangled Life’ by Merlin Sheldrake

(Currently reading this book and I never expected to find lichens so relatable. My new queer, nonbinary, polyamorous heroes of the natural world.)

#lichen #lichens #mycology #queer #queer theory #Merlin Sheldrake #Entangled Life

[godzilla-reads]

“Fungi are everywhere but they are easy to miss. They are inside you and around you. They sustain you and all that you depend on. As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years.”

—Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds

#godzilla reads #merlin sheldrake #entangled life #books and flowers #mushroom books #book blog #reading #bibliophile #book quotes #nature books #nonfiction books #booklr #bookworm

[jswatson]

entranced by the whole thing the sheldrake brothers have going on

one is an amazing mycologist and ate his own book. the other is an amazing musician with some real bangers. their parents are known for pseudoscience. they have the most fucked up names you could give to your children.

#cosmo sheldrake #merlin sheldrake #entangled life #im sure theres more weird shit about them i probably dont know about yet

[the-cosmic-yeet]

im reading entangled life by merlin sheldrake (100% recommend btw) and im on page 66 rn and this book has made me experience like ten different existential crises such as questioning the boundary of “self” and “other” and showing me the massive scale of fungi

the more I learn about hyphae I am convinced that fungi are actually angels. large beyond comprehension? operates in ways and purposes unknown? perceives more than I could ever with my two little eyes? these bastards have opsins. so basically. beings covered in eyes growing in all directions and existing in ways that are just. What.

also it’s 3 am and while I love bio and mushrooms and want to study them in the future my brain appears to be disagreeing. excuse me as I go back to thinking about these fungal bastards

#entangled life #merlin sheldrake #fungi #mushrooms

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Imagination forms part of the everyday business of inquiring. Science isn’t an exercise in cold-blooded rationality. Scientists are - and have always been - emotional, creative, intuitive, whole human beings, asking questions about a world that was never meant to be catalogued and systematized.

Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life

#book quotes #merlin sheldrake #entangled life #biology #ecology #nature writing #nature quotes #science quotes #literature #nature

[onestellarghost]

mushroom studies referenced from the cover of Entangled Life

#sketchbook art is hard to photograph whoops #aster's art #mushrooms #mushroom art #fungus #fungi #entangled life #merlin sheldrake #sketchbook #sketch

[peonybookblog]

🌿 books about plants (& fungi) 🌿

#plants #books #braiding sweetgrass #entangled life #plant messiah #gathering moss #michael pollan #this is your mind on plants #merlin sheldrake #carlos magdalena #pop sci #robin wall kimmerer #conservation #nature books

[memoriesofthepark]

This is your reminder to look up while you're out on a foray!

I tend to keep my nose in the dirt while I'm shrooming, but look what I found on campus! I wasn't able to get a good enough look for an ID, but we have some big beautiful polypore shelves here.

The past week has been very up and down emotionally but I'll focus on the highlights.

I got to drive up to Austin and see Merlin Sheldrake's new documentary Fungi: Web of Life at the Bullock museum!! It was fantastic and the first 3D movie I've seen in maybe a decade. It was very beginner friendly (and too short imo lol, about 45 minutes long) but still wildly interesting! I can't imagine what it must feel like to hold a sample collected by Darwin himself!

After the doc we found a cool vegan food truck in town, and I got to try lions mane for the first time! It was fried and soooooo good. 🤤

The doc seems to be running in a lot of museums nationwide thru August. I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance!

Southeast Texas, 26 Mar. 2024

#amatuer mycology #mushroom hunting #mushrooms #mycology #mushrooms of texas #fungi #texas mushrooms #wild fungi #fungi of texas #fungarium #foraging #polypore mushroom #polypore #bracket fungi #look up #wild mushrooms #mushroom #mushies #rot #merlin sheldrake #Fungi: Web of Life #species identification #mushroom identification #special interest

[haikulibrary]

Secret fungal web Makes the forest possible: Everything connects.

Title: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures Author: Merlin Sheldrake Published: 2020 Read: October 2023 Rating: 5/5

#haiku #original haiku #Entangled Life #Merlin Sheldrake #mycology #mycorrhizal fungi #reading #books #haikulibrary

[goldkirk]

I am in love with this small but very specific and very dear to me list

#cosmo sheldrake #merlin sheldrake #Merlin Tuttle #bats #music #science #these people are some of the vibes I aspire to have in this life as I create myself and grow #katie.txt

[nogendermoretrees]

So you've heard of the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which famously parasitizes ants and turns them into "zombies," controlling their movements? Well a research team wanted to know how that works so they looked at the structure of the fungus in ants right before it kills them.

They found that, "As much as 40 per cent of the biomass of an infected ant is fungus. Hyphae [fungal threads] wind through their body cavities, from heads to legs, enmesh their muscle fibres and coordinate their activity via an interconnected mycelial network. However, in the ants' brains, the fungus is conspicuous by its absence... The researchers suspect that the fungus is able to puppeteer the ants' movements by secreting chemicals that act on their muscles and central neverous system." (Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, illustrated edition, page 123.)

So instead of turning ants into mindless zombies, the fungus leaves their brains alone and just takes over control of their limbs, leaving the ants fully aware (to whatever extent ants are self-aware) but unable to control their bodies.

That is SO MUCH WORSE than zombies! Imagine The Last of Us but the infected still have their thoughts, personalities, and desires intact even as the fungus forces them to attack and kill their friends and family. Imagine having to protect yourself against them. Someone please write this so I can read it.

#body horror #fungus #mushrooms #ants #entomology #horror #zombies #the last of us #entangled life #merlin sheldrake

[godzilla-reads]

I’m really enjoying the illustrated edition of Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entangled Life”. It’s so beautiful and pulls you in, not to mention that Merlin Sheldrake writes so eloquently.

#godzilla reads #entangled life #merlin sheldrake #reading #mycology books #nonfiction books #book blog #bookworm #mushroom books #bookish

[astro-studying]

- Monday, Jan 22, 2024 -

Haven't posted here in a while, so here's a quick update on me!

Went to San Francisco for the AGU fall conference and got to present my REU poster!

Got into Calc III !!

Started a new job at my local library

Got my hands on a copy of Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, I'm so excited to read it lol

This semester is going to be one for practicing discipline for sure. Got a lot goin on, but a lot to look forward to!

#college #study blog #studyblr #studying #stem students #uni #college student #astrophysics #mathematics #new read #new year #im back! #update #cat #merlin sheldrake #entangled life