finn (spinydogfish)

A pharmacist in Taipei walked off a trail in 2022 and photographed a 1mm blue mushroom on a piece of wood. It turned out to be one of the smallest mushrooms ever described. The mushroom is now called Mycena subcyanocephala. It grows on decaying wood in Taiwan's subtropical lowland forests. Its cap is about 1mm wide, the whole fruiting body just a few millimeters tall. When young, the cap is intensely blue and fuzzy. As it matures, the blue fades to a pale whitish color. It has been formally documented in the wild only a handful of times. Eric Cho, the man who found it, is a working pharmacist in Taipei. His friend told him there was a "special tiny mushroom" on a trail in Shilin District. He went looking, found one on a piece of wood, took it home, and was initially disappointed because it wasn't glowing in the dark like he'd hoped. He posted the photos to iNaturalist anyway. The images went viral globally. Mycologists at Taiwan's Academia Sinica formally described the species in 2023, citing Cho's photographs as part of the documentation. Most new species described in the last decade have not been found by professional biologists in remote jungles. They have been found by amateur naturalists with smartphones, posting to platforms like iNaturalist, in places like trails behind suburbs in Taipei. The forest behind your house may still be full of things nobody has named yet.

Don’t comply. This time, just don’t.

Northern pike, a very aggressive predator. They’re native to the US and Canada and can get to greater than 50 inches in length. Cool fish.

Seth Rogen invented a rolling tray