But Seriously Though

[mitochondria-machine]

“Don’t worry, this place serves non-alcoholic drinks!”

The non-alcoholic section crammed in 10-point font at the end of the menu:

-soda in a can (sprite, diet dr pepper, sometimes ginger ale)

-tap water

[luulapants]

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.

[espanolbot2]

Real artists, made-up song titles.

Karaoke Night presents: “Story of Sisyphus” by Tom Waits #GameChanger (@rossbryant)

[theoutcastrogue]

I still can’t believe this was all improvised on the spot.

[heroineimages]

That was awesome!

[mitochondria-machine]

Curious to know what the margin of error is on tumblr polls due to people accidentally voting while trying to scroll past on the mobile site. Could you even quantify that?

[rlyehtaxidermist]

one of the best academic paper titles

[rlyehtaxidermist]

for those who don't speak academia: "according to our MRI machine, dead fish can recognise human emotions. this suggests we probably should look at the results of our MRI machine a bit more carefully"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I hope everyone realises how incredibly important this dead fish study is. This was SO fucking important.

[imightbeobsessedwithsocks]

I still don’t understand

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

So basically, in the psych and social science fields, researchers would (I don't know if they still do this, I've been out of science for awhile) sling around MRIs like microbiolosts sling around metagenomic analyses. MRIs can measure a lot but people would use them to measure 'activity' in the brain which is like... it's basically the machine doing a fuckload of statistics on brain images of your blood vessels while you do or think about stuff. So you throw a dude in the machine and take a scan, then give him a piece of chocolate cake and throw him back in and the pleasure centres light up. Bam! Eating chocolate makes you happy, proven with MRI! Simple!

These tests get used for all kinds of stuff, and they get used by a lot of people who don't actually know what they're doing, how to interpret the data, or whether there's any real link between what they're measuring and what they're claiming. It's why you see shit going around like "men think of women as objects because when they look at a woman, the same part of their brain is active as when they look at a tool!" and "if you play Mozart for your baby for twenty minutes then their imagination improves, we imaged the brain to prove it!" and "we found where God is in the brain! Christians have more brain activity in this region than atheists!"

There are numerous problems with this kind of science, but the most pressing issue is the validity of the scans themselves. As I said, there's a fair bit of stats to turn an MRI image into 'brain activity', and then you do even more stats on that to get your results. Bennett et. al.'s work ran one of these sorts of experiments, with one difference -- they used a dead salmon instead of living human subjects. And they got positive results. The same sort of experiment, the same methodology, the same results that people were bandying about as positive results. According to the methodology in common use, dead salmon can distinguish human facial expressions. Meaning one of two things:

Dead salmon can recognise human facial expressions. OR

Everyone else's results are garbage also, none of you have data for any of this junk.

I cannot overstate just how many papers were completely fucking destroyed by this experiment. Entire careers of particularly lazy scientists were built on these sorts of experiments. A decent chunk of modern experimental neuropsychology was resting on it. Which shows that science is like everything else -- the best advances are motivated by spite.

[thedisablednaturalist]

$100 dollars. An endangered species only got $100 fucking dollars out of the $1.2 billion dollars allocated towards saving endangered species. Why such a low amount? Why aren't people raising money and storming the streets in anger at such an insulting amount?

Because it's a snail. The Virginia fringed mountain snail, Polygyriscus virginianus, to be exact. And it's considered lucky for getting something

Invertebrates are so low on everyone's list that even an article detailing the absurd inequality in spending goes on to focus on plants only gaining 2% after briefly mentioning insects getting so much less, allocating only 0.5% of the budget. Many inverts like a species of stoneflies (lednian stonefly, Lednia tumana) didn't get any funding at all.

67% of the money goes towards TWO species. Pandas? No way (Those aren't American species anyways guys!!)

If you guessed Salmon and steelhead trout, you win a big seafood dinner! (Or would steak be better?)

I'm not saying that they don't deserve the money. But if that much of the budget needs to go towards two species, that means the budget is way too small. The Biden administration last year put forth millions of dollars to aid the long declining EPA and give it more staff in order to update decades old environmental reviews, as well as allocate more money to species that have been neglected, such as endangered species in Hawaii and desert fish in the southwestern U.S. Which is great, but it's not nearly enough.

Article:

America spends $1.2 billion a year on endangered species, but almost half goes to just 2 kinds of fish

Salmon and steelhead trout along the West Coast are the big winners of the Endangered Species Act.

[nthfunct-deactivated20231201]

man who opened a parenthesis he forgot to close 4 years ago is tragically unaware everything he's said since has been an aside

[elbiotipo]

Now that I think about it, learning about dinosaurs, on itself, has little "practical" use, knowing about them is just because they're cool, but they are useful for kids to understand:

the age of the Earth

evolution

scientific names and classification

basic ecological facts (carnivores, herbivores, etc.)

that science studies fucking awesome things and YOU can too

Which are all things that should absolutely be encouraged. Thank you, dinosaurs.

[gauntletqueen]

HEARTBREAKING: Poor girl has to get out of the soft warm bed even though she is so so so so comfy

[gauntletqueen]

HEARTWARMING: Since it is night, girl finally gets to crawl back underneath the covers and be so so so so comfy

[gauntletqueen]

HEARTWRENCHING: Morning has come again, poor girl suspects she might be stuck in a Sisyphean curse

[one-weird-mammal-a-day]

Aye aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis)

@ pfaucher

[only-tiktoks]

[icicleteeth]

I am begging and pleading on my KNEES for twitter artists to have other ways of contacting them for comm inquiries that isn't twitter dms, because this is the second time I have been account locked for the crime of....sending a dm because that appears to be how to contact them to claim a slot and now instead of making me do one of these tests to prove I'm not a bot. This hell website is making me do TEN????

[icicleteeth]

I GOT ONE WRONG BECAUSE IM STUPID AND INSTEAD OF MAKING ME FIX THE ONE I GOT WRONG??? I HAVE TO DO TEN AGAIN???? FOR THE CRIME OF WANTING TO ASK AN ARTIST TO PAY THEM DOLLARS FOR THEIR WORK! SEND ME TO HELL TOO!

[a-book-dragon]

You don't have a male or female brain – the more brains scientists study, the weaker the evidence for sex differences

Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.

rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

[liminalweirdo]

“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”

[guerrillatech]

[vanquishedvaliant]

This is definitely a plausible Hank moment, but only after a long episode of him misunderstanding and getting it ignorantly (but not maliciously) wrong at first, being distressed and confused about how he’s out of touch with the kids and gender ain’t simple like it used to be

right up until some rude asshole does this in his face and he needs to stand up for his friends / family and suddenly Understands the emotional crux of the issue

[cerayanay]

“And you have all these so called whistleblowers claiming the government is putting chemicals in vaccines and food to make you one of them transgenders or homosexuals. But I’ve never seen a transgender support the government or one of those so-called “gay frogs”, so it makes you wonder what THEYRE really putting in this stuff. All I’m saying is that Chelsea Manning went to prison and Mr. Rogan is a millionaire, and you always gotta follow the money”

[acomedytothosewhothink]

“Tell you what man, talkin’ ‘bout dang ‘ol critical gender theory man, ‘s all a construct, talkin’ ‘bout man’s man and real woman but I tell you what man, talkin’ ‘bout when the lights are off we all just dang ‘ol people man”

[vodka-aunt-m]

"Well I think she’s a real classy lady."

[justchukwa]

Not to be that guy but this is already canon. At the beginning of an episode Hank refers to a trans bank teller as "in between genders" but after a whole ordeal of him accidentally receiving a driver's licence that says he's female and everyone treating him like a woman for pretty much a whole episode, he approaches the bank teller once again and refers to her as "ma'am"

Hank Hill is canonically a trans ally after being misgensered himself

[podcastwizard]

dnd jokes that will always be funny no matter what your dm tells you

"jesus christ" "who's that"

"this is just like (tv show/movie)" "that's my favorite play"

referring to famous musicians or actors from the real world as "bards"

adding the word "fantasy" in front of modern things (i pull out my Fantasy iPhone and open Fantasy Tinder)

"how hurt are you" "on a scale of one to twenty-eight i'd say i'm at about a nine."

feel free to add more

[janicevaranus]

It makes me sad to see how common the hate for zoos is in leftist circles. To me, zoos are so symbolic of the determination and optimism in leftist thought that I often use these facilities as an example to keep me going. So when I hear fellow leftists wanting to abolish zoos it makes breaks my spirit a bit. Especially considering how necessary zoos are in the fight against the current environmental crisis.

I am the first to admit that no zoo is perfect. I have worked at a world class, accredited, non-profit zoo and it was FAR from perfect. The institution treated me and the other workers like shit. Burnout, lean staffing, and poor adherence to safety protocols resulted in poorer animal welfare outcomes for the animals. And this is a world class facility. There are many facilities out there that shouldn't exist at all that are hardly better than the menageries of feudal kings.

BUT

Zoos are vital if we want our ecosystems to survive the current mass extinction event.

No other type of institution on earth has saved as many species as zoos. From tiny snails to 1-ton bison, entire species have been returned to the wild thanks to their preservation in zoos.

There are approximately 40 animal species listed as Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN, most of which ONLY exist in zoos and aquariums. Many of these animals are only able to be taken care of because of the decades of animal husbandry science and institutional knowledge built up by our zoos and aquaria by working with other species.

There are many extinctions I cry for, but the ones that hurt the most are the ones happening in front of our eyes. The Javan rhino is all but gone. It's estimated that there would need to be about 100 rhinos for the species to survive genetically intact. There are now less than that, and none in human care. All it would take is a single tsunami or volcanic eruption and the entire population could be wiped out.

But if there were some in human care, if we had acted sooner and established a breeding population based on the centuries of knowledge we have of caring for their closest relative, the Indian rhino, we could have saved them.

So, when I see leftists talking about how all zoos are inherently destructive, I ask you to think ahead. To when polar bears, chimpanzees, or elephants go extinct in their natural homes, don't you want a place where we can save them? Where experienced animal care professionals can foster a population in human care so that one day these creatures can return to their homes? A global system of world class facilities dedicated to the survival of wildlife? So even more creatures don't end up like the Javan rhino; a species we could've saved if we'd had the will and the space to do so? If there had more zoos instead of less?

I'm not asking you to love zoos, I'm just asking that you recognize the practical necessity of their existence in the modern age. We won't survive the coming crises without other species. And they won't survive without us.

[oodlenoodleroodle]

If you hate zoos please consider the very real possibility that you have fallen for PETA propaganda. You have no idea what kind of money and legal power they are throwing at their anti-zoo campaign.

[is-the-fox-video-cute]

This is definitely the worst take I've ever seen on why wolves shouldn't be reintroduced into the UK

[isthedogawolfdog]

Hmmm, it’s almost like fantasy stories, especially the ones with the notorious “monster in the woods”, were fabricated to scare children enough to keep them out of the woods and/or away from dangerous people.

Little Red Riding Hood was a tale of stranger danger, not wolves jfc

[hp12300]

This isn't a reason to not introduce Wolves back into the UK. but like. Wolves would be dangerous to children alone in the woods in the middle ages. A wolf now would be dangerous to a toddler. A hungry enough wolf is dangerous to a full sized person.

not even saying this isn't a metaphor for stranger danger or whatever, it can be both. I'm always curious where people get the idea that wild apex predators aren't dangerous, fascinating take tho