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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Linnaean taxonomy classifies apes and monkeys as two closely related groups. This is the classification system most people are taught in grade school.

    Cladistics is a style of classification that seeks to organize species and groups of species from when they branched off of other groups of species. In this style, everything is defined by novel features, but they are still members of the more ancient clade. Birds for instance, would be a novel clade emerging from Dinosaurs, and thus all birds are also dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs are birds.

    Because there are two groups of monkeys with unique characteristics (new world and old world), and apes have unique adaptations not found in either group, we have no way of cladistically defining a monkey in a way that meaningfully does not also include apes.

    As a side note, this is where the phrase “there is no such thing as a fish” comes from. ‘Fish’ in the Linnaean sense are a huge and diverse category. Two random members of the fish class would likely be far, far more distantly related than a random mammal and a random reptile.








  • Little_mouse@lemmy.catoLefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comGet rid of landlords...
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    2 months ago

    Even without going full ‘free housing for everyone’ utopia, it would be nice if the rent students currently pay to landlords was recoverable when the space is no longer needed. The same way people paying mortgages can just sell their house even before it is fully paid off. We wouldn’t need to drastically reshape society in order to allow people to invest in their own futures rather than shovelling most of what they have into a landlord’s pocket.





  • You don’t necessarily need to roleplay, but something like “I would like to play on their guilt by seeming hopeless.” or “I would like to bring up the horrible acts of the orc warlord to stoke their anger.” or “I would like to convince them to help by pointing out how their oaths may apply in this situation.” would really help sell the specifics. If you are just trying a flat check I have no real way to know what you are planning on doing other than just sort of charmingly asking “Please?”


  • That guy didn’t have a car in the first photo either. They probably just walked home. But seriously, you can fit a surprising amount of groceries on a bike, especially with saddlebags or just a backpack. Plus, if you don’t have to drive to the grocery store you often find you can make a few smaller trips now and then instead of one giant stressful trip that you have to plan everything around.


  • The first few books (and really most of them that feature Rincewind) are not the best examples of his work in my opinion. Honestly the series evolves from cheap parody to suprisingly deep commentaries on life and society. Most of the books are standalone, so you don’t need to read all of them to get the best bits.

    Might I suggest ‘going postal’ or ‘making money’ as good examples of his later work that are particularly stand alone.



  • Little_mouse@lemmy.catoRisa@startrek.websiteGonna need a few rewrites
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    7 months ago

    I’ve always assumed that the Borg were once a truly egalitarian faction. One that seeks out other points of view in order to invite them into a collective where every voice has a share in the overall direction of the whole.

    I could see such a collective evolving into the current Star Trek Borg if things like fascism take root. A rabid xenophobia of thought that seeks to destroy any ‘wrong-think’ within the hive mind.

    It would explain a lot of the problems that the Borg seem to have. Why they never seem to learn from their mistakes despite their adaptability, why they all share one mind despite their quest for distinctiveness, why they have a single load-bearing queen despite their usual priority of hyper redundancy in all things.


  • Little_mouse@lemmy.catoRisa@startrek.websiteiPadd
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    7 months ago

    Honestly if I could just print up a new tablet instantly and without cost, I would have half a dozen around me when I am deep into a research fugue.

    Being able to quickly and easily flip between books or articles (or even different sections of the same book) while at the same time keeping the existing information up on a screen that I can directly reference is great.


  • Little_mouse@lemmy.catoRisa@startrek.websiteAm I? Who knows
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    9 months ago

    Exactly. Duplicating a person and destroying the original or truly transferring every atom from one location to another by teleportation results in the same level of continuity of consciousness as just going to sleep and waking up later.

    So why does the cloning version seem so, so much worse?