Crystal Toa

File under: Greg answers that just raise even more questions.

Great being 1: I have an item I think we need to add to the scroll of preparations.

Great Being 2: What is it?

Great Being 1: Throw all of the giant mutagenic spiders into a volcano.

Great Being 2: The WHAT?

Great Being 1: Hear me out… I think it would be a good idea to get rid of the giant mutagenic spiders before the Great Spirit Robot-

Great Being 2: Since WHEN does the Great Spirit Robot have giant mutagenic spiders?

Great Being 1: Well, it doesn’t. Yet.

Great Being 2: Yet?

Great Being 1: Okay, so you know how Mata Nui’s programming contains code to create a species called the Makuta, and the Makuta had some code for creating artificial animals called Rahi?

Great Being 2: Yes, of course I do!

Great Being 1: And you know how I said the code still contained a few, erm… “bugs”?

Great Being 2: Yes…

Great Being 1: Well, as it turns out, some of those bugs are giant mutagenic spiders.

Great Being 2: …

Great Being 1: Buuuut, since you’re always telling us, “don’t give me problems, give me solutions”, I come to you today with a fix for that!

Great Being 2: …the volcano?

Great Being 1: …Not JUST the volcano. I propose we create an artefact that, should the Great Spirit’s mission go on long enough for a Makuta to inevitably invent giant mutagenic spiders, we have an artefact already in existence that attracts giant mutagenic spiders! And them, you throw the artefact into a volcano so the spiders will follow it and get wiped out!

Great Being 2: …Wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the code for the giant muta-

Great Being 1: No.

guys who the heck is beethoven

behold, using the latest gene splicing techniques we've managed to resuscitate the fennec fox from extinction

Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

random button pngs

Switching between these every day

We need more walkable cities. I am so tired of my transportation turning to aquatic life. It’s so inconvenient.

”What’s in your pants?”

“Some kind of spacetime anomaly apparently”

I think a lot about the fact that the real genius of Hbomberguy’s plagiarism video was not just the exposé aspect of it but the fact that it so effectively demonstrated WHY plagiarism is bad.

When teachers warned against plagiarism in school, they made it seem like the reason it was bad was because it got you out of doing work. Plagiarism was bad because it was lazy. And that is (1) not a very strong deterrent to students who are only taking this class and writing this paper because they’re forced to and therefore don’t care about the work, and (2) missing the real harm behind the action.

On some level, yeah, plagiarism is bad because it will prevent you from learning how to write well on your own. There’s a real fear that a generation of kids won’t know how to write (which means they won’t know how to think) because they’ll be so used to having an “AI” machine do it for them that they’ll be helpless without it. That is very much a concern. But it’s far from the only issue. Harry laid out the other problems really well:

1. Plagiarism is enshittification. When you have to reword stuff to hide that you’re stealing it, the writing will be clunkier, wordier, more awkward, and less natural-sounding. This makes the piece worse, which isn’t good for anyone. Who needs more bad writing in the world?

2. Plagiarism spreads misinformation. Again, stealing stuff usually requires having to reword things to get around plagiarism checkers. That can make it very easy to (accidentally or purposely) rewrite a sentence to now be false instead of true. This is made worse by the fact that hiding the source of the information makes fact-checking impossible.

3. Plagiarism is anti-educational. If the audience doesn’t know where something came from, they can’t go visit that source to learn more about the topic. They’re prevented from finding any additional knowledge, which makes research—and therefore progress—difficult.

4. Plagiarism makes it impossible for creators to earn a living, thereby making it impossible to create. Funnily enough, this means less material for plagiarists to steal from, so the whole scam is really just a snake eating its own tail. Like all scams, it can’t last long. When plagiarists can make huge profits by stealing and putting out content faster because they’re stealing, the real creators who actually do the work have no chance. They can’t compete because they can’t create as fast as a plagiarist can steal. So they don’t make as much money, which means they can’t live off their work, which in turn means they can’t create anymore. This keeps going until all that’s left is stolen garbage.

There’s a lot to love about that video, but this part in particular is my favorite by far.

Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) »by Kee Liu

I’m seeing some confusion about this one in the reblogs, and it is for my money one of the most interesting things to know about birds, so:

The big guy in this picture is the cuckoo - a young cuckoo.  The little one is the momma bird, who is feeding the baby, even though the baby is now like five times as big as she is.  That’s because the cuckoo is a brood parasite.

Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds.  If the hosts notice the cuckoo egg, they will try to get rid of it - if they don’t, though, and the cuckoo chick hatches, they will raise it as their own, even though the first thing it does when it hatches is to murder all of their other children.

The question with this is always: why, at that point, do the host birds raise the cuckoo chick?   It’s way too hungry, it’s way too aggressive, it hangs around way longer than a normal chick would, and it’s huge, for god’s sake.   It’s obviously not theirs. There are a couple of theories. One is that the begging call a baby cuckoo makes sounds like an entire nest of normal chicks, and the parents are programmed to feed whatever makes that noise.   I got some doubts about behavior models that are that deterministic, though.  I like to think it’s some avian variation on the sunk cost fallacy - the parents put all these resources into making this nest and laying this clutch, and by god they’re going to get a baby out of it, even if it’s a giant monster baby.

There is absolutely zero science behind this but my impression has always been that the parasitized parents, upon raising a gargantuan monster child, are basically just thrilled to pieces, like, “fuck yeah my huge Gundam kid can beat up your honor student” and “gaze upon my feathered monster truck pride and joy and despair”.

AU where Emps brood parasited the primarchs onto various planets and all of them were raised by parents absolutely thrilled with their giant Gundam monster kid

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

Remember, when you're on the jury, a good "that cop's story didn't add up" will sway a lot more Chads and Karens than "fuck the police."

Lol. Lmao even

“ So it’s not the same species at all.”

“ Only if you use the scientific definition of species! However, if you use my definition that I just made up-“

told my parents i miss archaeology and my mom was, very sympathetically, like: “do you want to dig holes in the garden?” and i was like. yes. i want to dig holes in the garden.

my wife, after reading this to me aloud: It’s your people! …do you want me to break a clay pot for you to put back together?

me, burying my face in my hands: Maybe…?

These are both moods, but unfortunately I am primarily a bioarchaeologist. (IE, I specialize in digging up old human skeletons.) And, uh, home-made bioarchaeology is tragically discriminated against by law enforcement.