Mothra
@Mothra@mander.xyz
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 3 hours ago:
Oh well I guess I’ll change somebody else’s life then, no worries
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 10 hours ago:
I’m serious! But I’m glad I’ve influenced your worldview and ideals
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 11 hours ago:
Wait so is that what he’s saying? Omelette du fromage ? Look. I like scientists. I love cheese. And I am crazy about eggs. You tell me a scientist is whispering about eggs and cheese in my ear? I’m blushing to think about it
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 12 hours ago:
Maybe you’re onto something, I don’t know. But I’ve surely heard of terrible things people with a tan can do, so I’m not judging.
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 18 hours ago:
No, and that’s precisely the point I’m trying to make. That’s not what the quote means. The quote means “For the first time in history we’ve studied the physical appearance (or the cadaveric finding* ) of an animal we have had evidence for decades that was too different from any living animal today”
- "Appearance " might mean physical appearance or the event of finding the corpse, I’m not sure to which of the two they refer. That wasn’t your question though, I just needed to clarify.
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 18 hours ago:
Anyone knows which Dexter episode is this from? I loved the show, but I can’t recall seeing this one.
- Comment on Say it again, Dexter 19 hours ago:
That’s an understandable take and the use of the word analogue is the key issue. It also left me stumped for a while, because as you have already pointed out, there are plenty of modern day analogues to Homotherium…
…but that depends on what counts as an analogue in this particular context. Biologically speaking, the word can be used to fit a broad range of criteria. So you could say their modern day analogues are lynxes or snow leopards, and fair enough, that would be a good enough use of the word because these animals do share a lot in common, physically and in their ecological roles too. Large catlike mammal that hunts down larger herbivore mammals in a tundra environment.
But Homotherium had some very specific traits that have no modern day analogues. The large canine teeth is the most obvious. Those large teeth also meant a specialized hunting method and technique for which we have nothing alive today to base it off of. They also had a different body build, with shorter rear limbs, so now your cat looks a bit more like a bear or a hyena in its stance and gait. And if I’m understanding what I’m reading correctly, they also had cardiovascular adaptations for endurance running, and their claws and paws were not as retractable and supple as that of cats.
So yes they were like cats and you can point at living analogues for a lot of these adaptations ( bears, hyenas, cats, any mammal with good cardio, etc) but when you put all that together and add the teeth and the behavior modifications those teeth imply then you have, as a whole, an animal with no current living analogues. Yes, it can sound pedantic but that’s science for you and I think it’s important to remark that the quote is taken directly from the paper published. The journalists loved the buzz emanating from the word “analogue” so much they kept it in the non scientific publications, they didn’t paraphrase, and they didn’t bother explaining exactly what it meant because, well, that’s precisely why they chose to keep the quote.
- Comment on Fig. 1: Got your nose. 1 day ago:
I appreciate that the facial expression suits the occasion, unlike with most neutral faced medical illustration
- Comment on what can I use to cushion my knee when exercising with it on the floor so it doesn't hurt? 1 day ago:
Depends on the type of yoga mat! Some are very thick, some are very thin. Sounds like you got one of the thinner ones. You couldn’t possibly fold one the thick ones, it would open up on its own without a weight on it whereas the thin ones can stay as you leave them.
A kneepad is another option as many said already.
You also have mats for camping, my parents had a couple of these and they would lay them under the sleeping bags precisely to avoid feeling all the debris on the ground.
- Comment on What good thing just happened in your life? 3 days ago:
I slept all day yesterday and slept in this morning as well and my skin looks beautiful
- Comment on nighttime pollinator gang rise up 3 days ago:
YEA WHAT DO YOU MEAN, HUH? COME AT ME BRO
- Comment on Shorebirbs 1 week ago:
Well after about an hour of reading I found plenty of examples of gender reversal examples and some cool behaviors but nothing regarding chromosomes seems easily accessible or even mentioned. Reproductive behavior seems to be one of the main criteria used to establish evolutionary relationships (aka the cladogram) but that’s as far as the layman can find online. I didn’t search in Scholar though.
- Comment on Shorebirbs 1 week ago:
Really? First time I hear about these birbs, that sounds really cool :D I’m off to Wikipedia to fact check brb baiii
- Comment on Stars 1 week ago:
Well of course, because it’s spinning too fast. So you don’t see the star shape, only the blurry circle!
- Comment on The doctor regrets his creation. 1 week ago:
Remember once you get around compiling all the cadaveric sources you need to use the proper formatting style for reanimated corpses, not just any style
- Comment on Potoo Potions! 1 week ago:
Yes colored contacts have that effect always, but for a show you’d expect some effort into one of the main characters appearance
- Comment on Potoo Potions! 1 week ago:
This effect is relatively a very simple one to edit in post and would look a lot better than contacts. This looks so cheap
- Comment on pew pew 1 week ago:
I thought kangaroos and wallabies were similarly equipped if not even more bizarrely. But I’ve never seen it myself
- Comment on Scientists Reveal Rare 450-Million-Year-Old Arthropod Fossil Preserved in Glittering Fool’s Gold 1 week ago:
That’s really cool
- Comment on How long do you think we'll keep seeing "formerly Twitter"? 2 weeks ago:
Hopefully until the platform dies
- Comment on What's the point of a long-distance friendship? 2 weeks ago:
If you feel like you are not missing anything, then more power to you. It really has a lot to do with how you relate to people, it seems like for you it’s activities only and you don’t seem to bond intellectually too much or you wouldn’t be asking.
I’ve had several long distance friendships, in fact I still have and they are among my most stable relationships outside of family. It’s having those people you can rely on when things get tough for support, and also to share thoughts and discuss opinions or whatever - to have a conversation knowing we understand each other in a way most people don’t. That can be very rewarding even if I don’t see them face to face anymore, or, in some cases, even if I’ve never met them in person.
- Comment on if you quit a job you didn't like or was toxic, didn't the financial hit scare you? 2 weeks ago:
This might be a blessing in disguise then. Hopefully you find something you like better!
- Comment on bitey 3 weeks ago:
Just remember these guys can grip an animal the size of a horse with their jaws, overpower it, drag it to the water and rip it apart.
- Comment on We need to build an Yggsrasil 3 weeks ago:
I thought you were talking about the VR game in Overlord and was ready to post my support but you just want complicated forestry with no regards to marine life
- Comment on Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images? 3 weeks ago:
Yes, that’s my point. By “most people can see color well enough” I mean most people aren’t color blind and can tell apart basic color differences. That’s all.
- Comment on Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images? 3 weeks ago:
It does, however it doesn’t remove human error and it doesn’t help at all with situations or angles where you don’t have clearly defined contours, such as when representing facial features for example. People tend to draw what they understand, not what they see, even when using the one eye trick.
- Comment on Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images? 3 weeks ago:
Ah yes a camera obscura. In the past. So easy and obvious, hardly an inconvenience
- Comment on Why did it take so damn long for humanity to "learn" how to draw/paint realistic images? 3 weeks ago:
Hi. I’m an artist, and my answer comes from my personal experience and not from academic research on your topic.
Turns out painting and sculpture pose different challenges to artists. If your goal is realism, you first need to understand your subject, and then you need to translate it to the medium.
One key aspect in the process is finding good reference material to work from. Turns out human faces and bodies occupy three dimensional space, and they are somewhat readily accessible to artists. A talented sculptor can study a model and replicate it as a sculpture; it’s not easy, but there isn’t much else to be done.
Now let’s look at painting. Often people think painting and drawing is easier than sculpting because it’s more accessible, but that’s not necessarily the case especially if you aim for realism. The artist needs to use the brain and translate a lot, and I mean an awful lot, of the information seen in the model (3d space) into 2d. They need to remove one dimension from it, without breaking the illusion. This is why it’s ten times more difficult to sketch from life than it is to sketch from photographic reference; photos already did half the job for you. And back in the day photography wasn’t a thing.
This is very hard already, but on top of that comes color. Most people can see color well enough, the difficult part is understanding how to translate that to a flat, uniform surface that doesn’t emit light. From the get go this means you will have to crunch down and remove color information, ie you can’t paint the sun and expect it to shine like the real thing, instead you will have to either make everything else too dark or not paint the sun just to keep the lighting relationships making sense. Your brain has evolved to see color shades, to take into account lighting conditions and contrast and a lot of other things. And yet, you hardly realize you are seeing all these things because what matters to you is what color things are meant to be, not what color things really are in a myriad of lighting conditions. In other words, you don’t have a color picker tool ability that lets you easily replicate any color you see. This takes years of training.
Then as if this alone wasn’t difficult enough, you now have to deal with pigment chemistry and colors that dry different shades, incompatible or unstable pigment combinations, hard to find pigments, etc. These issues still have to be taken into consideration today, but in the past even more so since people had a lot less options available for a variety of reasons.
I hope by now you’re getting the idea that you have far far more opportunities to botch a painting than a sculpture. Take any civilization and with a few generations of skilled sculptors passing on the tricks of the trade you can reach realistic results. But it took centuries and a lot of thinking and writing and studying to start achieving realistic painting standards. I’m not surprised at all.
- Comment on yes, you 3 weeks ago:
Ah that explains why my life is on fire. Like the this is fine meme
- Comment on Lepidoptera 3 weeks ago:
Agreed ^^