Entropy_Pyre

@Entropy_Pyre@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Evolution Factsberg⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re forgetting our first land ancestor, the fish that decided to come up on land. By certain definitions, all land animals that descended from that ancestor are fish.

  It’s an obscure biology joke. Doesn’t play into day-to-day conversations. It is the same logic that causes biologists to say that birds are dinosaurs though—because they descended from dinosaurs. But by the same logic, birds also evolved from lizards, and before that amphibians, and from before that fish, etc. This definition is more like putting all of life into nested boxes. Or perhaps it’s more like the saying “all tigers are felines, but not all felines are tigers”.

  This definition is helpful for evolutionary biologists to talk about evolution at grand scale and how we might share certain genes with fish. But it’s admittedly not very helpful for day-to-day conversations that say humans are pretty distant from fish and don’t resemble them much at all now. (Though I admittedly love little biology facts like how our middle ear bones evolved from gills.)

  Anyway. I get silly excited about this stuff. Random nerdy rant done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon has an epic weekend⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d imagine there might be just a bit of under-reporting. People probably try to hide it.

  I live near some polygamist colonies where they pretty… nested. And they definitely don’t talk to the government about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨English has too many words for animals⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The spring comment is valid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How did Greek or Roman choose their gods besides the big name ones? I mean did they have a god of shoes, god who relieves constapation, or one for there squeaky door?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I understand, household gods were very common — personal traditions about a small god that perhaps your family worshipped for generations and had a small shrine to for protection. Some of these were picked up and developed into more general purposes for a larger audience.

  The Romans in particular also had a habit of picking up local deities for a larger pantheon, in these cases less of choosing gods, it was more like reducing some gods with very elaborate lore down to just a few specific traits. Though of course some gods were invented by storytellers on the spot and picked up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fucking math...⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Why did no one ever teach me this?? Did I miss this day in class? I feel so silly. This is really useful.