Philip Doherty

This is one area where I think AI can be very useful, even though I generally wish AI didn't exist. Since it does exist, I use it, for now, for the sake of myself and my loved ones.

I like to put together a lot of documentation -- what the symptoms are and everything relevant, including the timeline of when symptoms began and when they changed or worsened, etc -- and then use AI to give me possibilities of what might be going on.  I'm aware AI often will make egregious mistakes, so I don't make decisions solely on what it says.  But what it can do is give me a bunch of possibilities that I can then rule out or investigate on my own.

Just be aware anything you tell it could get stored forever on a server and used to serve you ads, or get hacked and become public one day.  The same is true of everything you ever search for on the internet.

Around here there are abundant mushrooms.  Now that I know most of the abundant edible ones, where they grow and when they appear, it's very easy to go gather hundreds of pounds each year.  Each year some mushrooms will be very abundant and others less so.  Last year was a big year for black trumpets and hedgehogs.  Mushrooms are out in the fall/winter here, and I'll often go for an hour or two hike up the mountain and come back with 20-30lb of mushrooms.

These I gather in very large amounts:

White Chanterelle
Golden Chanterelle
Black Trumpets
Yellowfoot or "Winter Chanterelle"
Hedgehogs
Matsutake
Queen Bolete
Manzanita Bolete
Amanita Muscaria (caution: must boil it thoroughly twice first to make it non-toxic, and toss the water, then it tastes very good)
Lobster
Coccora (Amanita Calyptroderma)
Yellow Coral (Ramaria Rubiginosa)
Oyster
Chicken of the woods (caution: needs to be thoroughly cooked and only eat the young tender parts)
Turkey Tail (tea/tincture only)
Red belted polypore (tea/tincture only)

And these in smaller amounts or less often:

Goats foot (Scutiger Pes-caprae)  (most delicious mushroom ever)
Candy Cap
Lactarius Deliciosus
Puffball
King Bolete / Porcini
Shrimp Russula
Some other California Russulas
The Prince (Agaricus Augustus)
Lion's Mane
Bear's tooth
Reishi
Witches Butter
Grisette (Amanita)
Blewit
Cauliflower
Jelly hogs / cat's tongue
Morels

And a couple that are very abundant but don't taste great, I still eat them if they're the only fresh mushroom around, I figure they're still nutritious:
Pig's Ears
Slippery jack (Suillus spp.)

There are a bunch of others that I've tried once or twice but aren't tasty or abundant enough to eat regularly.

Btw, the "crimini", "button", and "portobello" mushrooms are all the same species, and are normally cultivated although there is a wild version that grows in some places.  I wouldn't buy these - they are grown at industrial scale on manure that I believe mostly comes from industrial animal ag, i.e. factory farms.  Some mushrooms can be accumulators of toxins and factory farm manure likely has a lot of toxins.  I also don't buy mushrooms ever because they are so easy to get for free.  But if I was going to, the local mushroom growers I know focus on oyster/shiitake/lionsmane which are tastier anyway.

A tip for preserving mushrooms:
If I have a huge amount and don't have the space to dry them all or they are wet and likely to rot before drying, I can cook them down in a pot till the water boils off, let them start to caramelize a little, and then dry them.  This way they are already cooked and can be used as a dry crunchy snack, or they can be thrown in a soup and don't need to be cooked again, and often have a firmer or crunchier texture than if I threw them fresh into a soup.  You could add salt if you're going for the crunchy snack, but be aware that salt attracts moisture so if they have salt they need to be stored in a sealed glass jar.

I also pressure can them sometimes.  For this I'll also simmer them a bit in a giant pot to start with, so they shrink a little and I can fit more per jar.  I'll can them in quart jars, 14qt at a time in a big canner, for 90 minutes at pressure to play it safe.  It's a good way to preserve a large amount of mushrooms all at once if I don't have time or space to dry them.  And much more convenient for eating later than dried mushrooms.  Black trumpets in particular come out surprisingly good after canning.  

I also sell them at farm stands when I have a lot, and gift/trade them in large amounts.  

I'm 35M, 6'4", healthy and fit, clean natural lifestyle, no chemicals, I don't drink or smoke or use any medication or substances aside from very occasional wild mushrooms.

Looking for a capable, grounded partner who also values health and wants to raise a family in a natural way: barefoot outdoors eating real food and experiencing the world, on land with community around and a lot of laughter.  

I'm financially secure and ready to buy and/or build a place.  I'm open to living anywhere in the US where there's good water, trees, and community.  I have friends/family/community in rural spots in NY, NC, AK, and elsewhere.  If you have family or community somewhere you want to live near, I'm open to that possibility.  For now I have a sweet situation caretaking a large forest property here on the north coast of California where I have an off grid home base.  I'm somewhat flexible about how rural to live, there are tradeoffs, but I wouldn't want to live somewhere where I couldn't heat with wood.

Real food is important to me; I eat really good food and avoid industrial/processed food.  I've grown a big garden for a number of years, and also forage hundreds of pounds of diverse food every year.  I've helped with some regenerative cattle operations and would be up for doing that, or other kinds of animals, or otherwise subsist on hunting/foraging/garden etc.

I can build and fix anything, carpentry/plumbing/electric/solar/whatever, play and teach fiddle, and lots else.  I had a successful career as a software engineer, but left that 9 years ago as I didn't like the direction tech was going.  Lately I've been doing forest conservation work.  My passion is helping land to heal and become more abundant, and building community.

I'm open to being part of spiritual community if it's about being good people - truthful and kind and in service - and isn't exploitative or superficial.  I'm part of a men's group where we support each other in practicing being the way we want to be, and I would join or start something like this anywhere I live.  I love who I am now and I want to continue to grow without being defensive about my faults, and I look for a partner who is similar in that way.

I grew up homeschooled with a big garden and animals and a lot of friends and family and laughter around, and want to create a vibrant scene for my future family.

If you might be interested let's talk, my email is pdoherty at fastmail.fm.

There are beautiful places all over the world.  I think it is much easier for me to find a place where I would love to live, than to find a woman I would love to live with.

I will take the time to be pretty confident that I really want to be with this person before I give up my current home.  And I know myself well enough that I'd feel good about that decision.

So I definitely would choose a partner and a new place, over the same place with no partner.  I've been here eight years and really love this place, and, I have another 60-70 years ahead of me. ;)  I can fall in love with a new place.  

paul wheaton wrote:For me, a 96% solutions was to go poo-less.  

Next step - while on a different health journey it was suggested that dandruff is caused by what you eat.  

Same here.  Up to age 23 I used soap and shampoo regularly and usually had bad dandruff and stinky hair.  Then I quit shampoo and soap completely, and also improved my diet, and I have barely had any dandruff at all in the 12 years since then, and my hair smells OK according to my family who are not inclined to flatter me in this respect.

I do wash my hair with just water, and brush it, every week to few weeks.

I'll pitch in my anecdote:

Zero products, no soap/shampoo/sunscreen/lotion/chapstick.  Just occasional lard for moisturizing dry/cracked feet and occasional white vinegar as deodorant in the armpits if I need to be extra presentable.

I wash with cold water daily by getting in the creek, getting out, scrubbing my whole body just with my hands to mobilize any grime, and then rinsing again in the creek.  No soap or anything.  

I wash my (long) hair every week or two or three with a hot shower with just water and brushing it.  I'll scrub my face with a cloth with hot water.

This has mostly been my routine for nearly 10 years.  I haven't used shampoo or soap on my body in ~12 years.  Haven't used sun screen in at least 8.  I'm often in the sun but I mostly cover up with clothes rather than sunscreen.  My hands and feet and face tend to have a tan and I try to expose the rest of my body to sun gradually and never in huge amounts at once.  I now very rarely get any sunburn.  My skin feels smooth and healthy.  

There have been some times where I was barefoot or in sandals a lot in a dry climate and my heels started to crack a bit, and then I rubbed animal fat (lard or tallow) into them, sometimes before putting a sock on and sleeping with it on, which helped immensely.  

I have nothing against making natural skincare products, I'm kind of interested actually but just haven't put in the effort since I don't seem to need anything.  Admittedly the first months or maybe a year when I quit using soap and shampoo after having used it my whole life, I think I was pretty stinky - but I also was barely even washing with water then so I'm not sure how long it would have taken to get to a natural balance and smell OK without any products.

What was very stark to me was how my skin has almost never had any rashes or acne or anything in the 12 years since quitting all products.  Up until about age 23 when I always was using soap and shampoo I had frequent skin rashes, acne, dandruff, my hair stunk between showers, my body odor was much nastier than it is now.  I can't exactly say how much of this was due to diet vs skin/hair products.

A year later my sleep apnea still seems to be better most of the time.  There have been a few times I've had congestion perhaps from allergy to plants or pollen or something, where I could barely breathe through my nose and did not sleep as well.  I imagine my nasal breathing capacity could still be improved even if it's a lot better than it was, and maybe it's possible with more improvement I could continue nasal breathing even with some congestion.  I recently spoke with a breathwork teacher and was recommended to keep using mouth tape and also look into the "mewing" exercises for opening up the nasal breathing capacity - which I did, and I'm very interested in that.  I've been practicing resting my tongue on the roof of the mouth rather than the bottom of the the mouth where it had normally been, and also closing my lips, although that feels less natural still.  I do often notice my tongue resting on the roof of the mouth though, which is new and exciting.  

Mark A Ferguson wrote:although I wouldn't personally assume the sleep apnea itself was cured without testing.

How would you test for it?

I sometimes record my sleep to see if I snore.  Lately the couple times I did it there were a few minutes of snoring near the beginning of sleep but most of the night seemed to be consistent quiet nasal breathing.  The main thing I go by is if I wake up after 6-7.5 hours feeling well rested and without a dry mouth and without having drunk any water.  But I'm curious what it would mean to still have sleep apnea without any of those symptoms.

I'm sorry that's happened.  

I don't really have an answer for how to get around what they're trying to make you do.  If you really do need to use facebook, you could install their app briefly to confirm your identity, and then immediately uninstall it.  You could perhaps do this on some old phone you don't use anymore.  

If you're concerned more with "It would be too easy for me to use it" than "it will spy on me", you could install their messenger app, which lets you do direct messaging but doesn't have the feeds etc.

Better would be to open direct text chats or group chats with the people you want to stay in contact with.  My family all use a few group chats to stay in touch, we never interact with each other through social media.  This is definitely superior, because the big tech company doesn't get to decide who sees what and when - we all see everything that gets said or shared in there, and don't have to see any distractions or ads.

I think everyone would be well served to move toward group chats.  I am in local community group chats too on Signal which are superior to facebook groups for all the same reasons.  

I imagine some governments can still get all our messages from Signal if they want to through someone's compromised phone or through hardware backdoors, but at least the tech companies theoretically don't get to mine them for data.

Also related, I recommend adblock plus and/or ublock origin, and the socialfocus browser extensions that can hide ads and feeds and short videos etc from your internet experience.

Pete Podurgiel wrote:I like to eat some variety of mushroom every day, but wondering if it might not be a bad idea to give it a rest once in a while.

Agreed.  I don't worry about it too much but I imagine there is a benefit to taking a break from almost any category of food occasionally.  It seems natural to have seasonal changes in diet which effectively would do this, and also humans have always done various kinds of fasting which is known to allow the body to do things it doesn't get to do while digesting food, including some aspects of healing.  

Who knows what the "optimal" rhythm would be, but it might be wise when I notice I've eaten the same thing every day for weeks to take a break from it for a couple days.  Fasting would be the simple (but not easy ;) way.