slickhedstrong

slickhedstrong t1_jdvn6a2 wrote

the amount of cynicism here, where anything can be posted, is a healthy gate and a good inoculation for more casual audience.

science is an abstraction. r/science is a portal into a tiny fragment of that abstraction

and vigilance against accepting all posts to this sub as "truth" is not only healthy, but necessary for this sub's health.

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slickhedstrong t1_jdel1y2 wrote

i always assumed it was because the neurons in your gut work in tandem with the neuron in your brain. the guy has the second most amount of neurons in the body.

in my mind that's why we get "gut feelings" and would explain butterflies and why we thought love was any abdomen thing rather than a brain thing

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slickhedstrong t1_j9yo7nh wrote

"don't worry those toxic ohio chemicals in the ground and water and on your car and that you can see in the runoff whenever it rains will quickly evaporate into the air you breath"

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slickhedstrong t1_j8t8hcs wrote

we should call these things heimdall array or the Horus satellite or the Panoptescope and not run the risk of later finding out that webb was a racist or that nancy grace roman supported something, especially when our entire era is going to be seen as complicit in asian child labor the way we see everyone in the past as complicit is slavery or systemic misogyny and shit.

the hermes orbiting mirror, what a romantic name for something.

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slickhedstrong t1_j8bm9xe wrote

"wow a lot of young chinese people are losing their memories to the point that it would be suspicious if we still considered it a rare happening"

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slickhedstrong t1_j7vf3la wrote

the why doesn't need a cognitive or narrative motivation here.

why are volcanoes important to hawaii? because without them there'd be no hawaii. a fortunate random circumstance.

likewise, jupiter flexing the orbit of so many roaming bodies means we are offered a mild protection from more potentially dangerous objects flying around.

that's why jupiter's tendency to pull moons is important to earth. even if the why is ambient.

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slickhedstrong t1_j7t25ke wrote

let me throw in gigantism as an evolutionary trait that protects prey animals from predation, and thus escalation where predators needed to be larger to predate on huge prey.

the sheer variety of species back in time is massively scaled compared to today.

eventually things hit a critical mass though, as that size becomes unsupportable with slower reproduction and birthing cycles and strategies. look at pandas that would rather eat than mate, or alpha walrus social structure where most males never get a chance to copulate.

and so being smaller, caring for smaller young, requires much less resources, and allows much faster breeding, and so becomes evolution's dominant form.

add environmental changes like less oxygen, but count that as part of the resources a species needs to thrive, not a cause for gigantism.

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