this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
668 points (98.3% liked)

Science Memes

19777 readers
2643 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

AI has previously recommended people eat death caps.

[–] 0x0@lemmy.zip 11 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

All mushrooms are edible.
Once at least.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 2 points 55 minutes ago

Everything is edible once.

[–] bss03 3 points 2 hours ago

AI app: Great picture! That a "fls Brown cup"; it is delicious and fatal!

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

This is why the spore prints matter.

[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

You haven't checked the gills or the spores

[–] rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 17 points 8 hours ago
[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 6 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

I never heard of any mushroom like the one pictured in the meme, looking so similar and even growing on the same soil/medium. It's actually more like this:

[–] the_artic_one@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I've occasionally seen some false chanterelles (Hygrophoropsis sp.) do a pretty good chanterelle impression but they're not toxic, just bland and not well-tolerated.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 20 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Penny bun (yummy):
1000138275

Bitter bolete (extremely bitter+bad time on the toilet):
1000138276

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 16 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

St. George's mushroom (yummy): 1000138278

deadly fibrecap: 1000138277

Sometimes they look clearly different but not always

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 3 points 1 hour ago

These are more identical than the meme!! lmfaooo

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The fiber cap stains red as it can be seen in the picture you posted, the St George doesn't.

What I meant was that I don't know any edible mushroom that looks exactly the same as a toxic one and doesn't have a major characteristic that differentiates it immediately like the smell in the xanthodermus or the staining in the amanita ponderosa.

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The bottom one is not toxic, just tastes bad.

[–] the_artic_one@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago

I've heard some people use them as cocktail bitters.

[–] e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social 85 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

there was this german books on cooking with mushrooms, with some parts actually written by a fungi expert and they were finishing up the project and the editorial went on to the glorious idea to save money on the illustrations, and decided to go AI against the will of the author and the expertise of everyone else and go ahead on the print.

well… they had to destroy the whole edition.
who could have known?

https://www.stern.de/kultur/buecher/warum-ein-pilz-kochbuch-nun-vom-markt-genommen-werden-musste-36100284.html

[–] e8CArkcAuLE@piefed.social 25 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

When AI is involved in creating books, errors can occur. And if the subject is edible mushrooms, the danger can even be life‑threatening. In Hut ab! – Das Pilz‑Kochbuch from Callwey Verlag, author Martin H. Lorenz gathered recipes from renowned chefs such as Eckart Witzigmann, Franck Giovannini, Johann Lafer, and Vincent Klink. The publisher also provided exclusive photographs by Julia Schmidt, Nikolas Hagele, and Caroline Wimmer. The result is a product that would have been of genuine interest to many hobby cooks, especially in autumn. Nevertheless, the cookbook cannot be purchased for now. Besides the photos and recipes, the book also contains illustrations that have caused problems—because, apparently, artificial intelligence (AI) was at least partly involved in their creation. On the Reddit platform, users expressed confusion over the book’s images, noting that several mushroom species were depicted incorrectly. Laypeople could have confused edible mushrooms with similarly looking poisonous ones based on those illustrations. Mushroom expert speaks out The mushroom specialist involved in the production, Dennis Regul, has now publicly commented on the incident: “It concerns the book ‘Hut ab! Das Pilz‑Kochbuch’. I was involved, reviewed the content and gave feedback on errors. I received no fee, only five copies of the book. During the collaboration I discovered AI‑generated pictures and reported that they were completely unsuitable. Unfortunately, I have since found that they were still used,” he wrote on Instagram and Facebook. “I consider the AI‑generated images dangerous. I want to point this out because beginners could be led to collect the wrong mushrooms.” The publisher disputes this. According to a spokesperson, the graphics are not fully AI‑generated; they were created by in‑house illustrators and then visually harmonised with AI. The errors slipped in during that process—errors that the mushroom expert did not manage to spot in time. Although Regul provided critical feedback on some illustrations, those were corrected before publication. At Callwey, an intensive investigation is now underway to determine how the mistakes arose. The publisher has acted quickly: the book has been withdrawn from the market. Whether it will be reissued with corrected illustrations has not yet been decided; according to the spokesperson, this will not happen before 2026. AI becomes a problem for illustrators Earlier, the professional association of illustrators (Illustratoren‑Organisation, IO) had already criticised the use of AI in the industry. “When asked about the biggest future challenge, ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was by far the top answer. Moreover, reports are increasing about missing commissions, changed requests and price collapses,” the statement reads.

(translated with AI 🤖)

[–] Small_Quasar@lemmy.world 26 points 16 hours ago

Well, you've got to admit getting us to poison ourselves with mushrooms is a bit more subtle than Skynet's plan.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

I will trust AI 100% the minute any of the AI tech bros eat a mystery mushroom based purely on the output of AI content.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 59 minutes ago

I guess you're forgetting the time Elon Musk smashed his cybertruck window while demonstrating how indestructible it is?

Or the time that guy who was told his submarine design was stupid because fibreglass is strong under tension but still took it down to the bottom of the Atlantic multiple times until it crushed him along with some idiots that must have thought it was fine because it had been down and back before?

Didn't some politicians drink Flint water to try to "prove" it was safe?

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 58 points 15 hours ago (7 children)

Not good enough for me knowing there are Thomas Midgley Juniors out there:

On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of TEL, in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems. [...] Midgley later took a leave of absence from work after being diagnosed with lead poisoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

He was the jackass who invented both leaded gasoline and CFCs and inflicted them on the world.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I know the false one is toxic and fatal... But is it also delicious? We need to know.

[–] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 57 minutes ago

The poisonous death caps and destroying Angels taste good like an edible mushroom yes. Then they liquefy your liver over 2 days.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 7 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

Generally speaking poisonous things taste bad but not always! Add it to the data

[–] the_artic_one@piefed.social 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

This is very much not the case with mushrooms, most people who've accidentally eaten a deathcap (Amanita phalloides) have reported that they're delicious. Flu agaric (Amanita muscaria) which can be detoxified by boiling it and changing the water multiple times, is pretty darn good. I think it's better than the average grisette (the non-toxic Amanita sect. vaginatae spp.).

Ok the other other hand, the destroying angel (Amanita ocreata) is said to taste pretty bad.

For a non-amanita example, I've spit-tested the toxic Agaricus deardorffensis and I thought it tasted pretty good. That one is an odd case though since some people are unaffected by its poison and it's possible that's correlated with not being able to detect the unpleasant sharpie-like odor it's said to have, but I wasn't willing to give myself the shits for science so it remains a mystery.

[–] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 56 minutes ago

To say boiling Amanita muscaria detoxifies it is like saying boiling and dumping the water from psilocybin mushrooms detoxifies it. It's a drug, you can call it a toxin, but it's a drug.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›