Poogona [he/him]

Really feels like I picked a bad time to be interested in amphibians sometimes

Definitely jealous of getting to work with condors, sounds awesome.

I visited a lab where some of the last remaining dusky gopher frogs are cared for.

(reminder that frogs may be in what is considered the sixth mass extinction ever on earth)

Cockroach beneath bedbug? Ants and termites lower than a stupid ass butterfly?

I strongly disagree with this insect hierarchy and HARSHLY judge the character of its creator

The entire album Symbol by Susumu Yokota might hit the right nerve, though it’s heavier on the dreamlike side and doesn’t have lyrics. I use it for driving, writing, anything that needs a kind of hypnotized but functional state of mind.

It sucks ass but JP’s particular derangement is honestly pretty entertaining, moreso with the way his character has developed since his Journey Into the Dark (his brain damage from the medical coma). Get one of those ai tools to read in his deflating balloon voice and it should be bearable in chunks

Unto Others has a great section about this. In a bunch of studied tribes who live generally pre-industrial lifestyles, the anthropologists were interested in how they “organize” big projects like building a house, and when they watched them, wondered what made them so willing to just do it.

Long story short, they saw how the kids watched them and subsequently “played” at doing things like building houses, carrying things together, etc. They essentially concluded that the “work” they did was understood more like play–that without any coercion to labor beyond meeting their needs, they were surprisingly eager to do that boring stuff because they made it into the day’s activity rather than grinding “work.”

TL;DR unalienated labor schniff and so on

One common test is the famous “mirror test” where an animal is given some problem that can only be solved by using its own reflection in a mirror for reference, such as a study involving an Australian ant. They put a blue dot made of felt (I think) on the ant’s head behind the antennae, and watched the ant clean itself once it saw that it’s reflection had a weird blue thing on its head. But I don’t know if there are other tests for “self awareness”

This is kinda what I said, good to know my instincts were reaching in the right direction at least. I still hate how insipid and simplistic an idea it is to say “the wall was to keep people IN” that these people treat like sage wisdom

I wish I knew more about east Germany because someone recently dropped the “if it was so good why’d they have to stop people from leaving?” line and I had no reply. I have failed the cause and I will take my place against the wall

Look this is true but AT LEAST it’s how politics is supposed to work, it’s not about choosing the most ethically and morally consistent person, it’s about having a person in the seat who will vote the way their constituents want, no more

Hoooooly shit I forgot about the bedbug meltdown

HE GOOGLED “JEWS AS BEDBUGS” what a classic

Yeah I suppose the OP says “opinion” but this here fact has put me in the situation in the picture more than once

Bugs are not just bugs

Bugs are a subcategory of insects and you are wrong almost every time you call any old insect a bug

Exactly, I know it could be worse. I am legitimately impressed at the mental fortitude of those of you with honest to God chud family members.

Feeling pretty mean and gross, I fucking hate arguing with people who love me.

Last two times I have spoken to my well-meaning family about Palestine it has ended with us storming away from each other. We’ll agree about 99 percent of the matter but whenever it comes down to “is hamas popular among Palestinians” things get fucking ugly and it’s freaking me out, they are otherwise perfectly rational people but they need me to agree that Hamas is actually taking advantage of Palestinians as a whole. (For clarity’s sake my position is that no I am not a fan of baby killing or whatever but I’m not letting things get framed as though this is a separate war between the IDF and hamas with the palestinians being caught in between.)

The thing is I know I’m in the right but unlike some of you brave posters I’ve got no experience with how to endure these huge arguments with family without feeling sick and depressed afterwards

No need to go all the way to beatnik wandering artist. I feel like the creative urge can strike any person at any time, and the problem with this is that as things are currently organized, that spark will be smothered. Part of demonstrating to people why they should want things to change is appealing to those who have felt that happen to them. I don’t think a person ever forgets the pain of it, and it can happen to anyone.

He is a surprisingly fun writer to read, not just because he’s a pretty overt commie. He is really good with imagery; he can paint a picture in your head, which is useful for the pretty unique qualities of his kooky sci fi. Perdido Street Station was bursting at the seams with great pulpy ideas that refreshed a very stale genre for me.

(I have heard some unpleasant things about him being emotionally abusive to his ex though. If you don’t like having to separate the art from the artist you might want to keep that in mind.

A recent study about jellyfish found that even species that only have about a thousand neurons are capable of conceptualizing past experiences and adapting their behavior. These are animals that barely have a brain, and even they are entirely aware that they have a life and wish to live it comfortably. I like jellyfish, the little baby ones you can see at an aquarium are cute.

A human being has 100 billion neurons. We are like galaxies compared to that jellyfish. We hold emergent mental processes in our heads that can conceive of things beyond our own lives, beyond our own times, beyond time itself. And there are other humans willing to snuff all of that out by just firing a rocket, just to keep from feeling a little discomfort, to avoid some guilt.

Yeah it’s really awful when they know how to type/speak and yet have no information to share. Like they’ll write multiple paragraphs that boil down to “Hamas has bad vibes”

I just responded to a pretty similar position below.

It is silly to conflate opposition to the status quo with intellectualism. Those visionaries whose ideas led to paradigm shifts were still building upon previous consensus. Sometimes being correct puts you at odds with the group, but so does being COMPLETELY WRONG.

Sometimes