I got poisoned as a kid by mushrooms my family picked, from a spot picked there for decades, but I believe I got poisoned by a lookalike recently introduced. People can get overconfident (and stupid).
Still finding this account stretches the bounds of credulity...
> As innocence is presumed, the jury has to find there is no -reasonable- narrative consistent with the evidence that seems innocent. Not whether vibes are suss (the vibes are very suss but that's not enough).
> I'm not making a pronouncement on guilt or innocence with this.
Though there being an absence of death caps in the found leftovers....hmm. Is it reasonable to think the dehydrated ones were innocently only added to one or two to "improve the taste"? Probably not.
> There's several recent cases of poisonings from people picking them because they looked like edible species from back home. > www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...
That's incorrect according to the reported evidence given by expert witness Tom May on the 13th May. He said fungi are still poorly documented in Australia, new & introduced species are popping up all the time, and there are several types which resembled death caps which were not toxic. >
Narcissists are a lot rarer than people calling others one. A lot of people lie easily in difficult long-term social situations. The jury is likely to look more at the circumstantial evidence.
**...I just remembered that I could have eaten a Yellow-staining Mushroom as a kid, they look similar to field mushrooms & are common in Vic. You get sick shortly after eating & throw up (unlike death cap). Toxicity from phenol. However, literature does not mention hallucinations 🤷 ...a lot unknown.
I'm not someone who usually likes true crime stuff but I'm finding this court case very interesting. The defence attempting to foster reasonable doubt with pointing out similar looking edible species is fascinating. Perhaps some of the public really do take those risks.
However, circumstantially...
So I can't recommend Australian fungi foraging books, except apparently the expert witness wrote one because he was concerned about people getting it wrong. I can't vouch for it or anything.
Ahh, here: littleacre.com.au/products/wil...
I used to volunteer for the NT Herbarium & they laughed when I asked if they did fungi. "They're not plants!" Which they aren't, more closely related to animals...
I think there's so many risks foraging for fungi here in Australia, it's not worth it. But it's great spotting glow in the dark ones...
Did look identical to field mushrooms... Only other foraged fungi I've eaten were the magic kind & they have a LOT of literature to describe appearance, habitat, stain colour, spore print etc.
I eat foraged plants but fungi is so ambiguous & poorly documented & so many recently introduced species.
My Nan grew up on a farm (about 200km from Leongatha) where they regularly foraged for mushrooms, and when I was a kid we all went to pick at that spot, and well, I was sick when I nibbled on one before we cooked them. I still don't know what happened. I wouldn't usually trust foraging at all!
Sorry I just saw this. I'm not an experienced forager - I'd just been buying pine mushrooms a lot at a local food market and talking to the vendors, and knew they were supposed to be very distinctive & unique & grew only under pine trees.
I would not have the confidence to forage more generally.
"No, it's the voters who are wrong"
I've served up a dish with foraged mushrooms to guests, however they were pine mushrooms, an extremely distinctive looking mushroom with a distinctive taste that grows under pine trees, bright orange and stains green, showed them to the guests, we'd all been buying them from a local market.
My parents did accidentally poison me with mushrooms once (same state as this crime), however it just involved some hallucinations & vomiting. And the gills were BROWN (looked like supermarket ones). No one in their right mind here would ever touch mushrooms with WHITE gills. You learn it as kids.
Yep, I certainly got that one wrong!
Ooooooh. Well, I was wrong on that one. I thought that was a fancy spelling of Scott. I accept I'm a clown on that and apologise for assuming.
Now, about the liberalism thing.
Why do you take this as a personal attack? What specifically erased you, in your opinion? Can you not be so binary in thinking?
But what has gone absolutely viral? And trans women are primary who I'm talking about. They are the number one target due to trans misogyny. The anti trans rant 100% would have been about trans women. Which liberal women have NOT had a great track record with, so this is selective.
Liberalism serves the middle class. So much of the debate that is branded liberal serves the middle class. If you want to talk about what drives people to the other tribe, that's a huge one. Yes I KNOW they're full of shit, but weren't we talking about optics?
I don't think it makes sense to be hardline or purist or whatever, but I've noticed even the smallest attempt to critique liberalism gets met with a really angry wall of "DO YOU WANT THE REPUBLICANS TO TRIUMPH" which is a sad reflection on the zero-sum voting system & mindset.
In Australia, our right wing party are called Liberals. This is for a reason - liberalism is a specific philosophy that is entwined with capitalism, & comes from the aristocracy. Liberalism as a word in the US is doing a LOT of heavy lifting, but to other countries, the philosophy is still apparent.
This quote has gotten a *lot* more traction than those of actual trans people, I'll note.
"cLiMaTe cHaNGe hAPpEnS aLL tHe tImE"
Yes but not at this speed beyond life's ability to adapt, including us!
However — !!
(sigh... it did rain a bit in a few parts of metro Melbourne around 7am I believe)
bsky.app/profile/goat...
RAIN INCOMING.... oh never mind.
Last night. The autumn heatwave continues. #MelbWeather
PSA: Cybertrucks have cameras in every direction, and people's images after vandalism events are getting shared online , so be thoughtful about it!
Cheaper for the "no X condition" option.
