chonglibloodsport
@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
- Comment on ms paint tree 2 days ago:
Generally nature doesn’t keep doing a useless thing if there’s no longer any need to do it. Energy efficiency is a constant selective pressure in the absence of all other challenges.
My bet is that baobabs are shaped that way for very good reasons. The fact that the trees are spaced far apart even in baobab forests is a clue: the environment is very harsh, especially on saplings.
Since baobabs reproduce via many fruits and since they can be spaced very far apart my hypothesis is that they evolved to be very tall with featureless trunks in order to attract fruit-eating birds to carry their seeds. The tall and featureless trunks would make the trees difficult for ground-dwelling predators to climb, keeping the birds and their nests safe from attack.
I believe leopards are fairly common in these areas and they love to climb trees, although they prefer ones with lower, wider branches they rest on and even eat their prey within. Leopards have been known to carry large prey such as gazelles up into the branches of a tree to protect their kill from being stolen.
- Comment on Feces is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. 3 days ago:
It’s extremely efficient given the low calorie density, high fibre diet and extremely limited grazing time (dawn and dusk) of crepuscular rabbits.
Think about ruminants for comparison. They spend all day every day grazing on the same kinds of foods as rabbits. Rabbits have a much more rapid metabolism (faster resting heart rate and ridiculous athletic ability) than, say cattle, yet they manage to extract more energy in less time eating. Rabbits are a marvel of efficiency!
- Comment on Feces is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. 3 days ago:
Think about it this way: they’ve evolved a clever behavioural hack that doubles the length of their entire digestive tract without any increase in weight. This is extremely efficient!
- Comment on Feces is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. 3 days ago:
They deposit them directly into their mouth. They know when they’re about to produce one and they reach down there with their mouth and consume it directly.
If you think about where wild rabbits spend most of their time (underground in burrows surrounded by dirt) this makes total sense. By not allowing cecotropes to touch the ground, they avoid contamination with soil-borne pathogens.
- Comment on Spider mech!! 5 days ago:
All spiders are little mechs to me! Their legs are powered by hydraulics!
- Comment on Tigers 🐅 🐯 2 weeks ago:
Tigers are generally crepuscular which means they’re most active around dawn or dusk, when the sun is very low in the sky. Their orange fur does not stand out so well when everything looks orange under the golden light of dawn.
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 2 weeks ago:
I never use AI. Can’t stand it. Wish it would go away!
I also think it’s completely stupid and overhyped. I took a course in 4th year on building and training neural networks with PyTorch. I know how it all works at an intimate level. It’s not going to lead to a singularity any time soon (as so many people think).
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 2 weeks ago:
I think there’s a lot of explanations for the decrease in value of the ads:
- ad market saturation
- user ad fatigue
- rampant ad blocking
- less engagement overall
I’ve heard YouTube video ads pay a lot less to the creator than they used to. A lot of creators are struggling and feel pressured to release a lot more videos and more consistently. But this can all be measured by view counts where the numbers drop off as engagement disappears.
One of the worst things a YouTube creator can do is completely change the type of videos they make. This often gets people to stop clicking videos and YouTube’s algorithm takes this as a sign to stop recommending that creator, causing their views to drop off a cliff.
I wonder if there’s a similar issue with the ads on game review sites today. I have seen some YouTube video reviews that include a sponsored segment for a game I’d never in a million years consider playing (which has no relevance to the video at hand). Maybe if people are reading reviews the ads aren’t relevant to the games they’re playing so they never bother with them?
- Comment on 'There Are So Few Of Us Left': Even Full-Time Games Journalists At Big Websites Are Feeling It In 2025 2 weeks ago:
Video game reviewers used to provide a valuable service. Back when all video games were Nintendo expensive, we needed trustworthy reviewers to guide us towards making the correct purchase. Paying the inflation-equivalent of $100+ for a single video game made a single bad purchase really hurt.
Nowadays, people log on Steam and scroll through hundreds of previously purchased (never played) games they picked up for a few dollars each during a Steam holiday sale 3 years ago. They can just click download and start playing anything that tickles their fancy!
Plus I’d also add that many gamers have found games that have enormous replay value (especially multiplayer games like League of Legends or Hearthstone or Fortnite) and they sink thousands upon thousands of hours into that one game.
What room is there for professional game reviewers reviewing new games every week and writing about them? Most gamers seem to have more games than they could ever want, plus single games that could last a lifetime by themselves.
The same could really be said for music reviews. People used to read magazines like Rolling Stone in order to get reviews of the latest songs from the hottest bands. Nowadays people just listen to the music themselves and decide whether or not they like it, no reviewers needed.
- Comment on Luka gets ejected 2 weeks ago:
This really shows that refs have too much discretion with technical fouls. I don’t think the NBA will do anything about it though. I’m sure they see it as critically necessary to stop players from saying/doing family-unfriendly stuff.
The favouritism towards Lebron is really corrosive though. They should never have let him become such a whiner in the first place!
- Comment on Luka gets ejected 2 weeks ago:
I don’t mean just this game. LeBron does it every game but he never gets T’d up! Why does LeBron get so much leeway from officials but not Luka?
- Comment on Luka gets ejected 2 weeks ago:
What I don’t get is why LeBron doesn’t get T’d up. I see him barking at the refs all the time and they don’t care. I guess he’s really careful not to say any swear words?
- Comment on Which actor did not have a single bad film? 2 weeks ago:
James Dean. Credited in only 3 films (appeared in a few more as an extra):
- East of Eden
- Rebel Without a cause
- Giant
All 3 are above average on IMDb (> 7).
- Comment on Which actor did not have a single bad film? 2 weeks ago:
Plan 9 from Outer Space!
Dubbed the worst film ever made. To be fair to Bela Lugosi, he had no choice in the matter as he appeared in it film posthumously.
- Comment on If you could add, remove, or alter one single bodily function, what would it be? 3 weeks ago:
Remove the need to exercise, like an anaconda. The ability to just lay around doing nothing and still be ripped to the max. That would be cool!
- Comment on cool kids club 3 weeks ago:
But hey on the upside you give birth to extremely tiny babies and then raise them in a pouch!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve never been to NYC. In general I would say I’m not a fan of big cities. I guess I’m biased though.
I will say Toronto has some very nice areas where I wouldn’t mind living. They’re extremely expensive though!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve been to Toronto many times and talked to loads of people who have either lived there or visited there many times. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard say that!
- Comment on Other than Canada and Australia, which countries are best alternatives to traveling to the USA? 3 weeks ago:
If you’re looking for an alternative to the USA’s big landscapes and natural parks then Canada is your best bet. If you’re looking for more cultural stuff and things to do in cities then Canada only has a few nice cities and they’re spread across the country from coast to coast.
- Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production 3 weeks ago:
Why not Solar? I have fairly recent Casio (FX-260 Solar II) and it works in dimmer lighting conditions than I’m comfortable working under anyway. Under normal lighting (for being able to see while doing math with pencil and paper) it’s rock solid!
- Comment on Np fam 3 weeks ago:
I’m not sure exactly. The suicides happened a few times when I was there. I don’t pay as much attention to it now but there have been some cases that made the news.
When I was there and someone took their own life, people protested for better mental health services. I don’t know if they hired more therapists or not since then. My own experience with counselling at school was very positive!
- Comment on Np fam 3 weeks ago:
These are extremely separate bubbles. Just like Republicans and Democrats, people who are all-in on college sports are practically on a different planet from people who don’t care for college sports. They pretty much don’t associate at all, except perhaps at the dinner table on holidays (such as the infamous Thanksgiving).
I suspect there’s some strong correlations between political affiliation and college sports preferences, but it’s only a hunch, not something I’ve researched.
- Comment on Np fam 3 weeks ago:
They’re kinda screwed if they don’t. Universities compete for students. Schools that can’t attract loads of students end up shutting down programs, laying off staff, shrinking, and even closing completely.
Students are applying to a lot of different schools these days. Reach schools and safe schools. There’s all kinds of advice about what schools a student should apply to based on their skills and interests.
Ultimately, once a student gets offers from their applied schools, the final choice can come down to many non-academic factors. How nice is the school’s campus landscaping? How’s student life? How many extracurricular programs are there? How good are the school’s sports teams and facilities?
Education advocates often say none of that stuff should matter, yet if the choice is up to the student it absolutely does matter.
The university I went to is one of the top in my country for the programs I was interested in. It’s long had a reputation for having an ugly, minimalist campus without much to do. The rigour of its academic programs and competitive student body has been reflected in numerous cases of students taking their own lives.
Since I started there (now since graduated but visit often), the school has spent a ton on landscaping and beautifying, constructing beautiful new buildings and renovating old ones. The school now has new gyms, rock climbing walls, and a new food court / study area with lots of tall windows looking onto a green space. There’s also a brand new building for student housing being built as we speak.
And here’s the thing. All the new buildings and programs have new administrative staff. There are more staff than ever running open houses and prospective student tour programs and summer camps for kids. The school is open year round yet through all of these additions and upgrades, enrolment hasn’t increased very much.
And that’s the bottom line. Schools have to spend loads of money just to tread water. Many other schools are losing students outright despite all their spending on upgrades and new staff. These are publicly funded schools, by the way, not private schools.
- Comment on i just wanna live 3 weeks ago:
Centipedes are scary because they have so many legs and they scurry very fast with incredible agility. In general I think we feel a revulsion to small critters with that kind of speed and agility. But if they’re too small (fly sized or smaller) then it’s more annoyance than revulsion.
The many legs thing is a real mystery though! I think it might be some kind of proxy for venomous critters, as spiders and centipedes have more legs than insects and also tend to be more venomous (apart from some Hymenopterans).
- Comment on What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists? 4 weeks ago:
If you’re visiting BG1 via the Enhanced Edition it’s actually been changed a lot from the original game. One of the biggest differences is that summoning spells don’t scale in the number of minions you get the way they did in the original. I remember summoning great big walls of skeletons with Animate Dead and just having my entire party pelt the enemy with slings and arrows from relative safety. Can’t do that anymore!
- Comment on What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists? 4 weeks ago:
I actually prefer walls of text these days. I find myself too impatient to sit through long, voice-acted diatribes. I can read 10 times faster than the voice actor can speak, so I just end up turning on subtitles and skipping most of the voice acting anyway.
I also just find that voice acting tends to compromise the amount of writing. They just won’t have the VA read a wall of text and instead they’ll cut it right down, removing tons of nuance. Voice also similarly compromises the amount of dialogue options available to the character. I have yet to see a voice acted game with the sheer breadth and depth of dialogue option choices as games like Planescape Torment or Fallout 2.
- Comment on Why do news articles and such call the governments of countries/groups of countries after the capital? 4 weeks ago:
It’s Synecdoche, a figure of speech where a part of something is used to refer to the whole.
- Comment on Physicists vs Normal People 5 weeks ago:
Not to mention the driver’s hands and feet!
- Comment on "Save the Bees, Murder the Wasps" 5 weeks ago:
Do you mean you cemented over the weep holes in the brick around your house? Those gaps in the brick mortar are necessary for proper drainage. Brick is porous so it will absorb water and then accumulate behind the bricks unless the weep holes are there to allow the water to drain.
- Comment on All things have a right to grow. The blossom is brother to the weed. 5 weeks ago:
They’re cave-dwelling spiders. They still need a way to find new caves to inhabit. If they’re already settled in your house then they may not survive because you’ve interrupted their lifecycle. But new spiders are wandering in all the time. Those ones may have better luck finding a new house to move into (or coming right back into your house) because they haven’t been established yet.
