Yesterday, drove from Seattle to Westport, a small town on Washington’s coast.

I was lucky to join what’d been a prearranged trip for none other than … mushroom foraging. Our target was Amanita muscaria, which even if you’re a mycology novice like myself, you’ll recognize by its distinctive red and white spots, made unforgettable by Super Mario and the Smurfs.

Amanitas have some pscychoactive properties, but between their toxicity and the relative mildness of the effect, outlawing them was never a priority like it was for psilocybin mushrooms.

We spent the rest of the day walking around the beach and swinging by the harbor for fish and chips and crab melt. Westport is a quaint town with a rural feel, and I found it darkly amusing that this would be prime real estate up in ill-weathered Canada, but goes largely ignored in America despite being only a few hours drive from Seattle (metro population ~4M).

Later, continuing Spring ‘83 implementation, I wrote neospring-bridge, which cross-posts this feed to neospring as a board (try curl https://neospring.brandur.org/2c98169d0b6fa73cab5a830be8dde53c5f388d5c6f8e6f756b6b6dbcc83e1124). I still need to do something with layout, federation, and a frontend, and it’s far and away the most likely outcome that this project doesn’t get traction, but it’s been a great hack project.