I see loads of questions getting bandied around on Reddit, and sometimes the answers are are ace, but other times there are new guys answering new guys and the answers are bizarre, so let’s have a go at cleaning some of it up, for shits and giggles.
What does MSS mean?
Okey-dokey, in at the top with a big one. All the syringes I sell are what’s called MSS, which stands for “Multi Spore Syringe”. I’ve seen some people on Reddit getting confused by this terminology. What it means is this: the syringe has spores in. It’s that simple. It doesn’t mean that they’re spores from different phenotypes, it just means that there are multiple spores in there. This is your basic “I am making spore syringes from spore prints” kinda deal.
Some people seem to have assumed that it means it’s like a mix of various different spore prints – this isn’t the case. That would also be a really strange thing to do (I can’t think of a single plus point to it) but if you wanna mess about at home and do something like that for the fun of it, fill your boots, there’s weirder ways to kill time.
MSS is a bit of a genetic lottery – because there are millions of spores, even in a very clear-looking syringe (Psilocybe Cubensis spores are about 8.5 micrometres long, which means each one is .0085 of a millimetre), there are a lot of genetic combinations available. This is why in countries where’s it’s legal to cultivate mushrooms, people will use MSS to get something started, and will then select out fruits with the desired traits, clone them using agar, refine the mycelium using agar, transfer to liquid culture, and then grow from there.
What’s a Liquid Culture syringe?
So here’s another type of syringe! It basically contains live mycelium, so isn’t a Multi Spore Syringe as there is only one genetic line in there that began with two spores getting their fuck on. It can even be made from actual mushrooms – if you were to cut a bit out of a mushroom and put it onto/into a medium it likes, it’ll revert back to a mycelial stage (mushrooms are fucking amazingly interesting). So a liquid culture syringe doesn’t have spores in, just mycelium. This is the Rad Shit if you live in a country where cultivation is legal as you can more easily isolate what you’ll get as an end product, and it’ll shave a few weeks off your project time.
Sadly, in the UK it’s illegal, as the mycelieum will contain trace amounts of Psilocybin, so I don’t (and wouldn’t ever) sell it. Looks fuckin’ cool under a microscope though, vaguely jizzy. I guess it depends on whether you think looking at that sort of thing is your cup of tea!
Can you get some swabs in stock?
Yeah, probably. I’m working on it, basically. The issue I have is one of scale – I need large quantities in order to make it worth putting items on the site, as (and I’m eternally grateful for this) I sell a lot of products per week. There seems to be enough demand for this sort of thing though, so I will get round to it when I’m able!
Oh hey man I hear you went to watch Tool in Manchester, was it good?
Yeah it was fuckin’ rad man. Had multiple moments where I was just completely lost in the music and the light show, and it’s only when the lights changed that I realised that I’d gotten sucked in. Very cool. Decent setlist, quite a bit from the new album, Fear Inoculum, but they got one of my favourites in there with “Hooker With A Penis” which it turns out is just incredible live. The support band was Brass Against, who were also good. It’s the first time Tool have toured over here in sixteen years, so y’know, it was a thing that had to be done. Such a tight band, I was absolutely blown away. Got Nine Inch Nails in June too so that’ll be awesome too!
