sapper-in-the-wire

people today with access to more raw information than any other period: the earth is flat

german artilleryman in 1916, who barely washes his own ass: I need to account for the curvature and rotation of the earth when plotting my firing plans

thefloatingstone

Eratosthenes, an Egyptian, in 3750 BC when fucking mammoths hadn’t even gone extinct yet: Oh hey I can use these two obelisks to calculate the earth’s entire circumference based on the length of their shadows and the Earth’s curvature. Neat.

alaija

Erastothenes was born in 276 BCE.

The last mammoth died on in island off the northeast coast of Siberia in ~1650BCE.

And as I’ve pointed out previously, the Coriolis effect was known even earlier than that, although it may not have become important to gunnery.

brett-caton

I find it utterly bizarre that humans saw these megafauna.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/science/woolly-mammoth-extinct-genetics.html

“ In fact, the Wrangel mammoth’s genome carried so many detrimental mutations that the population had suffered a “genomic meltdown,” according to Rebekah Rogers and Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California, Berkeley.

Analyzing the Swedish team’s mammoth data at the gene level, they found that many genes had accumulated mutations that would have halted synthesis of proteins before they were complete, making the proteins useless, they report Thursday in PLOS Genetics. “

That “genomic meltdown” is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal, because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries, when the most likely outcome is a population running about - unable to reproduce sexually since the whole “male genocide” bit - with incredibly damaged chromosomes.

Sex exists for a reason, and no, “because it’s fun” is not the answer, sorry. It works better than reproduction otherwise. Which is why every complex species uses it.

Intelligence requires a lot of things to be working correctly, and if you have an all female species that is over the tipping point of idiocy, then there won’t be enough people to maintain the technology to continue to reproduce. And humans will go the way of the Wrangel beasties.

Fortunately, feminists are horribly lazy bastards, so i doubt they’ll continue to get their way, but it does made for a decent plot for a dystopian fiction…

iron-sunrise

What …the fuck?

smitethepatriarchy

That went off the rails so suddenly like I thought I was just gonna learn something cool about mammoths and then WHOA.

kiwianaroha

I scrolled past this thinking “the earth is round, yes, something, something, mammoths…’

But the second time it came past I saw

That “genomic meltdown” is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal

And I think I got whiplash from that pivot. I also laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe.

miyajimosachi

I’m????

prince-atom

Point and laugh at the MRA, kids.

lyricwritesprose

How … does he think … mammoths reproduced …

Never mind, not sure I want to know.

sarkos

reblog to support Mammoth Feminism,

ignore for G E N O M I C M E L T D O W N

lankyguy

I here af for my Feminist Mammoth ladies, bring the species back!

DOWN WITH GENOMIC MELTDOWN

lavvyan

I… what exactly is combining ovaries supposed to achieve? 400 lazy feminist babies at the same time?

telesilla

Shhhh…you weren’t supposed to tell anyone.

curlicuecal

FEMINISM KILLED THE MAMMOTHS

peteseeger

I feel like we’re getting away from the main point here, which is that the world is flat

beepost-generator

the world is only flat because it was trampled by feminist mammoths

bigmammallama5

reblog if you support your army of genetically-melted feminist mammoths that trampled the earth flat

gotinterest

Don’t anybody tell this guy about that species of lizard where there are only females it might break him

systlin

My head hurts after reading that.

solacekames

I’m sending this post to @wehuntedthemammoth

grison-in-labs

Why would you hurt me like this?

That “genomic meltdown” is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal, because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries, when the most likely outcome is a population running about - unable to reproduce sexually since the whole “male genocide” bit - with incredibly damaged chromosomes.

I teach genetics, I don’t deserve to have to explain why this is so wrong and yet. Oh my god.

Mueller’s Ratchet–which is what this chucklefuck is talking about, the reason that purely asexual lineages don’t last well in evolutionary time–does not apply to feminism. The hypothetical scenario of merging two eggs to create a baby? Yeah, uh, that’s fucking sex in this context, whether or not it involves a male.
There are zero feminists pushing for parthenogenesis for humans, mostly because the whole thing is basically impossible for mammals as a result of mammalian investment in genomic imprinting. Among other things. It’s the sort of thing that only works okay in species that don’t control their embryonic development anywhere near as closely as your basic placental mammal does, because it relies on a certain amount of flexibility about sex determination and placental mammals are kind of weird about that.
Even if there were, Mueller’s Ratchet only applies if you never ever sexually reproduce and reshuffle alleles, like the parthenogenetic whiptail lizards mentioned upthread. If we have the technology to induce parthenogenesis in a human woman, we have the technology to reshuffle some alleles now and again. Mueller’s Ratchet kind of presupposes that going in and manually editing a genome isn’t a fucking option, shitwad!
Furthermore, Mueller’s Ratchet is specifically a population genetics phenomenon that refers to the accumulation of deleterious mutations within an asexually/clonally reproducing lineage. It has dick fuck all to do with chromosomes.
Mueller’s Ratchet exists in order to explain why asexually reproducing lineages haven’t overrun the world, because frankly in the short term these lineages usually do way better than their conspecific, obligate sexually reproducing partners do. Furthermore, it’s really fucking common to see species that reproduce sexually at some times and asexually at other times, depending on context and who’s available, and that’s in and of itself a complex fucking phenotype you species-centric cortically starved ignorant dillweed
all of this is completely fucking irrelevant to the mammoth example that @brett-caton there chose to bring up, by the way, because mammoths don’t fucking reproduce asexually either

as you would know if you’d bothered to read the paper, you self-satisfied jellyfish fellator
or even the pop science article you cited yourself
which clearly and cogently explains that the fucking mammoths died of being inbred as all shit, much like yourself

the laziness inherent in jumbling all this pig-ignorant, overconfident and understudied bullshit together and claiming it’s a solidly built house rather than a crumbling, confused pile of enraged starfish is the final straw

you can’t even be arsed to read an article that you dug up and cited yourself, you shithugger
how are feminists supposed to be the lazy ones?
you obviate your own thesis with your own intellectual failure, you pathetic snailsucking weed in the garden of knowledge

nineprotons

I reblogged this before but I have to do so again because of the above takedown with its glorious insults. Also, it’s always fun to point and laugh at MRAs.

trashcan-supernova

I am in awe.

whyareyoukillingeveryone

“Mueller’s Ratchet kind of presupposes that going in and manually editing a genome isn’t a fucking option, shitwad!” and “you pathetic snailsucking weed in the garden of knowledge” are honestly awe-inspiring and I’m fucking blessed I read them today

thattimberwolfkid

This is beautiful

scottishdragonqueen

It’s been long enough since I last saw this post that I’d nearly forgotten and it still fucking hit me like a goddamn freight train.

deliriumcrow

You self-satisfied jellyfish fellator, you pathetic snailsucking weed in the garden of knowledge

Fucking poetry there, Shakespeare would be hard pressed to improve upon these lines.

naamahdarling

@shitpostsampler The snailsucking jellyfish fellator quote is golden.

dosmit-raeh

Are we just going to ignore “a crumbling, confused pile of enraged starfish”?

apprenticenanoswarm

‘oh hey that’s funny :D man, flat-earth sure is one of the stranger conspiracy theories isn’t it. ooh who was Eratosthenes? i should look him up! and now we’re talking about mammoths, cool , i love mam

“genomic meltdown” is one of the reasons feminism is so potentially lethal, because they keep pushing for asexual reproduction, or trying to combine ovaries

liasangria

“a crumbling, confused pile of enraged starfish”

kingdom-noise

now this… this is a post on tumblr dot com

x-cetra

i’m still sad Eratosthenes missed out on the mammoths by like >< much

iconuk01

So has MRA been “Mammoth Rights Activists” all this time and I just misread the memo?

getvalentined

An open letter to @staff

I already submitted this to Support under "Feedback," but I'm sharing it here too as I don't expect it to get a response, and I feel like putting in out in public may be more effective than sending it off into the void.

The recent post on the Staff blog about changing tumblr to an algorithmic feed features a large amount of misinformation that I feel staff needs to address, openly and honestly, with information on where this data was sourced at the very least.

Claim 1: Algorithms help small creators.

This is false, as algorithms are designed to push content that gets engagement in order to get it more engagement, thereby assuring that the popular remain popular and the small remain small except in instances of extreme luck.

This can already be seen on the tumblr radar, which is a combination of staff picks (usually the same half-dozen fandoms or niche special interests like Lego photography) which already have a ton of engagement, or posts that are getting enough engagement to hit the radar organically. Tumblr has an algorithm that runs like every other socmed algorithm on the planet, and it will decimate the reach of small creators just like every other platform before it.

Claim 2: Only a small portion of users utilize the chronological feed.

You can find a poll by user @darkwood-sleddog here that at the time of writing this, sits at over 40 THOUSAND responses showing that over 96 percent of them use the chronological feed. Claiming otherwise isn't just a misstatement, it's a lie. You are lying to your core userbase and expecting them to accept it as fact. It's not just unethical, it's insulting to people who have been supporting your platform for over a decade.

Claim 3: Tumblr is not easy to use.

This is also 100% false and you ABSOLUTELY know it. Tumblr is EXTREMELY easy to use, the issue is that the documentation, the explanations of features, and often even the stability of the service is subpar. All of this would be very easy for staff to fix, if they would invest in the creation of walkthroughs and clear explanations of how various site features work, as well as finally fixing the search function. Your inability to explain how your service works should not result in completely ignoring the needs and wants of your core long-term userbase. The fact that you're more willing to invest in the very systems that have made every other form of social media so horrifically toxic than in trying to make it easier for people to use the service AS IT WORKS NOW and fixing the parts that don't work as well speaks volumes toward what tumblr staff actually cares about.

You will not get a paycheck if your platform becomes defunct, and the thing that makes it special right now is that it is the ONLY large-scale socmed platform on THE ENTIRE INTERNET with a true chronological feed and no aggressive algorithmic content serving. The recent post from staff indicates that you are going to kill that, and are insisting that it's what we want. It is not. I'd hazard to guess that most of the dev team knows it isn't what we want, but I assume the money people don't care. The user base isn't relevant, just how much money they can bring in.

The CEO stated he wanted this to remain as sort of the last bastion of the Old Internet, and yet here we are, watching you declare you intend to burn it to the ground.

You can do so much better than this.