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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • theneverfox@pawb.socialtoScience Memes@mander.xyzSmooth
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    11 hours ago

    Interestingly, it’s looking more and more like evolution isn’t random, and not only is evolution happy with “good enough”, it seems like it actively stops there

    Based on some recent experiments with bacteria and editing out existing genes, it seems like it chooses one genetic area at a time, and once it makes a marginal increase in an area it switches to another

    It’s possibly a mechanism to avoid a population boom then bust - if you improve too much too fast, you’ll outcompete your environment to the point you destroy your own ecological niche

    However it works (and figuring that out is bleeding edge research), it’s very old. Interestingly, Darwin’s later (unpublished) writings went in this direction, but the theories lost out to the random mutation theory




  • theneverfox@pawb.socialtoMemes@lemmy.mlCheckmate Valve
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    3 days ago

    Nah, because while it would be very easy to implement something like that, it would require specifically doing it. Programmers have 3 reasons for writing code

    It’s cool. It’s necessary. I was told to do it in exchange for money

    (And the secret fourth reason, it just kinda happened. I was building this related thing and I realized it’d be stupid easy to toss it in…I was in a fugue state and I have no idea what I wrote, but it’s some of my best code ever)

    Devs don’t generally care about this kind of thing, and most of the time neither do the business folk. This kind of unnecessary crackdown only comes up when consultants like McKinney, who I’ve recently learned are the reason everything sucks



  • Conservative super pacs have been running ads against him for months. He still doesn’t have a running mate. No one showed up to support him outside his trial. Rich shareholders have cooled on him, because an erratic president will hurt stocks far more than any tax breaks or slashed regulations will help

    His supporters are leaving his events because he just looks weak and incoherent - he’s not even “incoherent sprinkled with buzzwords”, he now just rants about himself like an old man

    Mainstream media is owned by a few billionaires - regardless if they want Trump or Biden, selling Trump as a threat kept people focused where they wanted them. They’ve been showing as little unedited footage as possible, but even his softest softball interviews have so little that makes him look good.

    I think it’s ok to be optimistic, I don’t think I can sit through the debate tonight, but I think the clips will be interesting






  • I don’t think life is rare, nor photosynthesis, but complex life might be. A planet needs to be really thriving with life for it to be worth it to go down the path to something like animals

    But I think the bigger filter is much stranger.

    Humans are a hive-like species. We’re not just social - we’re insanely interdependent, we don’t function on our own and yet we’ve ended up in this place where we (often) try to individually succeed, even at the cost to our community

    We’re greedy enough to want the stars, yet interdependent enough we could only swarm over them in endless numbers

    There’s many problems with the fermi “paradox”, but personally I think one of the largest is assuming all species would spread like a cancer blotting out the stars

    A more individualistic and long lived species might instead be careful explorers, taking what they need and leaving little sign of their passage. A more communal species might be careful and control themselves to not destroy pointlessly. They might also feel no desire to contact other species

    We’re just the right mix to want everything a star could give, and to want to find others at great energy cost



  • In fairness, most computers built after around 2014-2016+ last way longer, performance started to level off not long after that. After all, devs write software for what people have, if everyone had 128 gigs of RAM we’d load everything we could think of into memory and you’d need it to keep up

    Macs did have some incredible build quality though, the newer ones aren’t holding up even close to as well. I’m still using a couple 2012 Macs to play videos, it’s slow as hell when you interact, but once the video is playing it still looks and sounds good



  • I think you’re looking at it the wrong way - triggering the flight or fight response won’t make you able to fight or flight by itself. You have to practice the responses or they’re useless - detrimental even, like a deer in the headlights

    Play is a way to exercise those instincts and practice responses, but in a safe way. We even creep into the danger zone a bit sometimes, but most people (and animals) keep the danger measured

    Fear isn’t pain - it’s not meant to be an absolute deterrent. It makes us think twice and go into fight or flight mode to handle a challenge - it doesn’t discourage behaviors, it moderates them. Sometimes you do have to face off a rival, or need to take a risk for a reward. It releases endorphins if we come out of it better off

    So it’s not weird that we are drawn to it - horror stories/movies/games trigger it artificially, but so does fighting each other or tests of courage


  • I don’t think it’s weird - we’re animals, mammals and hunters no less, and animals play. If we have unstimulated instincts and free time, we find ways to exercise them

    It’s kind of like the zoomies or play fighting, it’s just built into our design, for one reason or another

    Now, aliens might come here and be fascinated how Earth vertebrates can even function, assuming this isn’t a common thing. But I’m guessing our social behaviors will be more mind boggling