pjwestin
@pjwestin@lemmy.world
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 3 days ago:
My old biology teacher used to say, “evolution only works as well as it needs to.” Rabbits digestive systems are so inefficient they have to eat their own shit just to get enough nutrients. Hyena clitoris are so large they sometimes suffocate their offspring during birth. You’re mouth is full of vestigial molars that will likely require surgery in your lifetime. None of those things matter, as long as your genes are successfully being passed down effectively
Panda’s have a digestive system that’s not well suited to their diet, and they’ve adapted to that mostly through behavioral changes. Since they don’t have kind of stomachs that efficiently digest plant matter (like a cow’s four-chamber stomach), they’re constantly hunting for different types of bamboo to get the nutrients they need. They eat young bamboo shoots of one species in the spring, then migrate to higher elevations to get the shoots of another. Both shoots lack calcium, so they migrate again in late summer to get more mature plants calcium-rich leaves.
One weird physical adaptation they’ve developed is in their pregnancies. They mate in the springtime, but fetuses require lots of calcium to develop, so females embryos basically get, “paused,” neither developing or dying, until later in the season when they have more calcium in their diet.
Anyway, I guess my point is that evolution did fix the pandas digestive system to work with plants. It’s just that, like most of evolution’s fixes, it’s a solution that’s barely held together by duct tape and hope, and it could fall apart at any minute.
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 6 days ago:
Yeah, but Pandas aren’t herbivores, they’re vegetarians. They’re too slow and clumsy to actually hunt prey, so the only thing they can catch is bamboo (which is the fastest growing plant, so I guess that’s something…sort of…). Anyway, the point is, Pandas as a species are from a family of predators, and they would absolutely eat meat if you gave it to them.
- Comment on *confused flatfish noises* 6 days ago:
Birds? No. Though, even on the side they do often have a tilt toward frontal in a lot of predatory birds. It could be argued…
Birds of prey absolutely have their eyes positioned on the front of their heads. It’s most obvious in owls, since they have the largest eyes and wider faces, but all of them have front-facing eyes for binocular vision.
- Comment on Controversial startup's plan to 'sell sunlight' using giant mirrors in space would be 'catastrophic' and 'horrifying,' astronomers warn 3 weeks ago:
Scientists: One desperate plan we are considering to combat climate change is a series of gigantic mirrors to deflect sunlight away from the planet.
These assholes: OK, but what if, like, the opposite of that?
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 4 weeks ago:
That’s the Senate.
- Comment on We'll never have anything like the DVD screensaver ever again 1 month ago:
Wait…it can actually hit the corner? I thought that was just a legend.
- Comment on International Shitpost Wednesday! 1 month ago:
Chicken or bird?
- Comment on James should have used his money 2 months ago:
The Pokédex also heavily implies that Meowths are using coins that they find and collect, not generating money out of thin air (though I don’t know if the anime follows the same rules).
- Comment on But also, the correct answer is Devil's Due 2 months ago:
I envy you.
(He was an annoying self-insert character for young boys that was more prominent in the first two seasons. You migr know him from the, “Shut Up Wesley,” meme. He was played by Will Whedon who, by all accounts, is a pretty chill dude).
- Comment on What is in for the antivax in a government? 2 months ago:
RFK is a true believer; he actually thinks, against all evidence and logic, that vaccines are bad for your health. Trump does not give a shit about vaccines, but he offered RFK the CDC position because A) RFK was running a third-party candidacy in 2024 that could have cost him several swing states and B) anti-vaxers are a large part of the Trump coalition, but he was losing their trust after promoting the covid vaccine. Most congressional Republicans are just going along with this out if cowardice.
So, tl:dr: ending vaccines is what RFK (stupidly) believes in, Trump put him in power to return a favor/appease a portion of his base, and every other Republican is too chicken-shit to do anything about it.
- Comment on But also, the correct answer is Devil's Due 2 months ago:
It’s a Wesley episode.
- Comment on But also, the correct answer is Devil's Due 2 months ago:
Yeah, but the answer is TNG, Season 3, Episode 2, The Ensigns of Command. That’s about when they hit their stride. If you’re very brave you could start with Season 2, Episode 9, The Measure of a Man, but that season is pretty hit or miss (if I remember right, the season finale was a clip show).
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Sees someone articulating the problem of streaming platforms elevating low quality or toxic media in children’s feeds.
You, a genius: “This is bad parenting.”
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Yeah, I was a teen in the early 2000s too. Most people still consumed most of their media through live TV. Anyway, you’re right, I should build a home server and start burning my own torrented DVDs. That’s the only reasonable solution to, “apps suggest crappy shows to my kid,” and it’s definitely the thing a parent of a toddler has the time to do.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Yeah, thanks, I’m not looking for notes.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Accept they didn’t. They mostly watched live TV.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Paw Patrol is empty calories. It doesn’t teach emotional regulation like Daniel Tiger, or shapes and colors like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, or numbers, letters, and problem solving like Sesame Street. It’s not harmful like Cocomelon, and I’ve accepted that my son loves it, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.
Curating what your child consumes, both dietary and cultural, is the basic requirement raising a child.
Yeah, I curate what my child consumes, thanks, I just don’t have the time or energy to create a bespoke tablet of torrented kids shows to present him, or track down a circa-2002 portable DVD player and start a new physical media collection. If you’ve got that kind of free time, great, but I’ve just got to use the apps I’ve got, accept that he’s going want to watch some shows that I find worthless, and make sure he doesn’t consume anything active harmful.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
I don’t give him a tablet, he only watches at home on TV (or a phone on very long car trips). I don’t know a toddler parent that has the time to download a curated media library for their kids, and even if you do have the time, things like that fall apart eventually. My wife and I managed to avoid most crap TV until we wound up in a hotel room with two dead phones and a fussy toddler, and that’s when we finally caved and put on Nick Jr. For a while, we managed to convince him that Paw Patrol was only available in hotels, but eventually he saw the thumbnail for it when we were trying to show him Dora the Explorer, and that beautiful lie finally died.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
Holy shit, I did not know you could do that. That is going to be life changing.
- Comment on And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away 2 months ago:
App suggestions make it so hard to keep kids away from slop. I started out only letting my toddler watch PBS Kids programs and a few other educational programs, but then your kids start seeing suggestions for all sorts of shlock, and they want to see the show with the superhero kitties is (it’s called Super Kitties and it is garbage). God help you if you try to watch something on YouTube; every suggested video is either low-quality home movies of people playing with toys (which is like crack to toddlers or weird shit like this that absolutely shouldn’t be on YouTube Kids but often is anyway.
- Comment on Intelligent Design 2 months ago:
Rabbits’ digestive systems are so inefficient they have to eat their own shit to get enough nutrients.
- Comment on Superfan Ben Stiller Has A Star Trek Pitch, Says It’s Important For Franchise To Return To Big Screen 3 months ago:
I love many Star Trek movies, but the big screen is not important to the franchise, and it’s best work has always been on the small screen.
- Comment on Anyone else guilty of this? 3 months ago:
Yeah, if she plays an N64, she won’t be exposed to any popular series from today, and will instead play things like Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Smash Bros., and Pokémon.
- Comment on Tried naming the states from memory as a European 3 months ago:
I world have labeled you guys, “Frasier.”
- Comment on Tried naming the states from memory as a European 3 months ago:
Yeah, seriously. At least call us, “Revolutionary War Reenactors,” or, “Cold NYC.” I’d even take, “Southern Quebec.” But lumping us in with Montana and the Dakotas? That’s some bullshit.
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 3 months ago:
Do you mean one and two? Two and three are clearly different, as three has no pattern other than disenfranchisement. I agree that one and two are both valid ways to divide the squares visually, but the text is stating that one is, “perfect,” and two is, “compact but unfair,” implying that the goal should be getting each political group some representation. That is still allowing politicians to pick their constituents, and even if it’s more fair than three, it still built to serve the candidates, not the voters. Compact (i.e. a system that divides districts entirely by geography and population, without consideration towards demographics or political alignment) should be the actual desired outcome.
- Comment on Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point 3 months ago:
I don’t use A.I. because I’ve had nothing but negative interactions with A.I. Customer service bots that fail to give adequate responses, unhelpful and incorrect search result summaries, and, “art,” that looks like shit hasn’t made me want to sign up for ChatGPT or Gemini. For most people, this isn’t a moral stance, it’s just that the product isn’t worth paying for. Stop framing people that don’t use A.I. as luddites with an ax to grind just because tech bros spent billions on a product that isn’t good yet.
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 3 months ago:
Everyone’s been doing either one or three for decades, the fascists are just more effective at it. What’s changed is that they’re doing it in a non-census year with the explicit goal of changing the outcome of the 2026 midterms. The only states with have unbiased districts are the places where people have passed ballot measures against partisan districting, but Democrats have been just as happy as Republicans to pull this shit.
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 3 months ago:
Number 2 is the actual ideal, not number 1. Number 1 represents, “good,” gerrymandering that politicians argue for, but it really only serves them. They get to keep highly partisan electorate that will reelect them no matter what, which means they can be less responsive to the will of their voters. They only have to worry about primary challengers, which aren’t very common, and can mostly ignore their electorate without issue.
It’s also important to note that this diagram is an oversimplification that can’t express the nuances of an actual electorate. While a red and blue binary might be helpful for this example, a plurality of voters identify as independents, and while most of them have preferences towards the right or left, they are movable. The point is that actual voters are more nuanced and less static than this representation.
Number 2 is how distracting would work in an ideal world; it doesn’t take into account political alignment at all, but instead just groups people together by proximity. A red victory is unlikely, but still possible if the blue candidate doesn’t deliver for his constituents and winds up with low voter turnout. It also steers politicians away from partisan extremism, as they may need to appeal to a non-partisan plurality. That being said, when literal fascists are attempting number 3, we’ll have to respond in kind if we want any chance of maintaining our democracy, but in the long term, the solution is no gerrymandering, not, “perfect representation,” gerrymandering.
- Comment on How Coldplay actually sounds 4 months ago:
That’s certainly how I feel about Parachutes. Solid little album, even if it’s not reinventing the wheel. I feel more mixed about A Rush of Blood to the Head. Some of their best tracks are on that album (The Scientist may be their best song), but a lot of it is forgettable, and Clocks just sucks, don’t know how that became a big single. I thought X&Y was pretty meh, and then I stopped listening.
