My brain while it brains

@aria-says-some-shit

greetings! i'm aria and don't care what pronouns you use for me. my current obsession is worldbuilding. DNI if you read this.
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CLADISTICS ruined my life

yall joke but this is actually a serious conundrun with cladistic-based classification

The choice is this: 

Birds are reptiles 

Or crocodilians (and probably turtles) ARENT 

That’s it, that’s the choice 

What if Bird and reptiles are two different things that came from the same thing

Nope 

Because you can’t group (lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians) without also including (birds) 

So if you don’t want to include birds in reptiles then you have to leave out some things we’ve called reptiles 

birds are dinosaurs though, full stop. we’ve already defined what a dinosaur is and it includes birds. but reptiles isn’t really defined so much as thrown against a wall angrily. 

But don’t turtles and alligators have more in common with modern reptiles than modern birds have in common with modern reptiles? I’m not trying to contradict, I’m trying to understand. Mammals and reptiles have a common ancestor as well, but we do not make them the same group.

It’s not about having things in common. It’s about common ancestry, which is how we classify animals in light of extinct species, which defy trait-based classification. 

And, the common ancestor of [lizards, snakes, tuatara, turtles, crocodilians] by definition is also the common ancestor of birds. It is NOT the common ancestor of mammals. 

So, either we decide that Tuatara Lizards and Snakes are the only reptiles, or we include birds as reptiles. Or we just decide reptiles are no longer a thing. 

don’t throw reptiles against the wall? please? some of them are small and delicate. you could hurt them.

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Basically, unless we’re maybe talking massive horizontal gene transfer, everything is still part of the group that came before it. 

You are technically a fish.

IIRC the fish thing is so frustrating that scientists have decided fish is just not real cladistic grouping at all

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hey could we go back please to the bit where the closest relative of Birds is Crocodiles? bc I am alarmed

Well, technically they’re equally-closely related to crocodiles, alligators, gharials and tomistomas. As archosaurs, they’re all descended from small reptiles that looked something like this 

The two main groups of archosaurs are the Pseudosuchia, or crocodile-line archosaurs, and the Ornithodira, or bird-line archosaurs. Both groups were massively diverse in prehistory, with the Pseudosuchia dominating most land-based niches in the Triassic, and the Ornithodira, especially the dinosaurs, doing the same during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. However, most of them have been wiped out due to the Triassic and Cretaceous mass extinctions, leaving them each with only one surviving clade: Aves, the true birds, and Crocodylia, the semiaquatic, ambush predators like crocs and gators. 

This entire post sums up everything we’re not allowed to mention in our Vertebrata classes because the last time someone started that argument they had to break up a fistfight.

I’m just hung up on the humans evolving from fish comment.

Like, we evolved from tiny tree-climbing squirrels. To the best of our knowledge.

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theclockworkjules

…which evolved from tiny tree-climbing reptiles

…which evolved from amphibians

…which evolved from fish.

*runs in ten minutes late with a plucked chicken* BEHOLD A LIZARD

you could have left the feathers on this time tbh

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winneganfake

It was already plucked. They just STOLE IT from philosophy 101.

Every turn on this post has been a left, but somehow it hasn’t hit itself, and instead just spiralled outwards like some Ancient Greco-Roman floor design, enveloping taxonomy Tumblr in chaos.

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May I recommend the book “why fish don’t exist” by Lulu Miller

May I recommend

the book “why fish don’t exist”

by Lulu Miller

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

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the year is 2023, marie kondo holds j*ff b*zos by the skin on the back of his neck in front of a public gathering

“does this one spark joy?” she shouts at the restless audience, they boo in response

she snaps his spine like .5mm mechanical pencil lead and throws his lifeless corpse to the crowd, they cheer in response

Please tell me this is our timeline

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Miíyu miíyu. It is Speak Your Language day. However, thanks to Colonization and “extermination” and other genocide methods, I only speak a few words of what should have been my first language.

When we think about languages it is important to know of and support the ones that Colonial Imperialism has done its best to eradicate.

This includes not mocking them as silly,

not saying they sound like nonsense,

not joking about their spelling, the look of their alphabet,

not joking about how they sound

as “making no sense” to you just because you speak a Majority language. You are not more comprehensible or correct than their words are just because you can’t understand them.

That is Colonizer rhetoric.

Respecting a language actual people speak is part of not being bigoted.

 Yes, this includes languages spoken by “white” people, like Irish, Scots Gaelic and Scots dialect, Breton, Welsh, Cornish, and so on.

These few words you see me use are Chamteéla, one of the languages formerly common in what is now called California, USA.

Noó$un Loóviq

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All of this

And also, please, if a minority language is really close to a dominant language, don’t dismiss it as an “improper/incorrect” version of that language

Scots isn’t “improper English”

Occitan isn’t “improper French”

Corsican isn’t “improper Italian”

Frisian isn’t “improper Dutch”

and so on

"minecraft's gameplay setup incentivizes behaviors that mimic colonialism" post notes are full of people insisting that OP is being criticized on the false assumption they're "cancelling" minecraft players

Where did you even get that. OP is being criticized (by me) for not knowing how Minecraft works and is played

You can't give an in depth critique of something you don't understand in depth

I think Minecraft borrowed a lot of tropes that are common throughout gaming that have colonialist origins, for sure. For example the jungle temples and desert pyramids which exist for the player to loot, there are structures everywhere with chests inside that are assumed to be free for the taking.

The antisemitic origins of the villagers have been discussed before, but there's also something to be said for how you're encouraged to "help" and protect villagers and it sort of suggests that the villagers aren't able to fully utilize the potential of their world without your help

Automation is just a very odd thing to single out as evidence of a colonialist mindset within the player base

Particularly since one of the functions of automation is to make resource collection sustainable within the space you are using/building upon. Iron farming is not crucial, but the activity it replaces is expanding your mines outward in search of more iron, since iron is a non-renewable resource outside of the mechanic where villagers generate iron golems

@ofallthefallenstars I think for the most part, the troubling implications built into the gameplay of Minecraft revolve around villagers and how it becomes economical/profitable to lock them up and exploit them for trades, not to mention how they're portrayed as like, humanoid but subhuman somehow.

As the player you are the only one with the power to build. Villagers and piglins are NPCS with a society and culture but they don't have the same power to shape their world that you have.

Giving the other NPCs powers that you don't have, and/or making them more independent and active in their own activities apart from you, could do a lot to fix these problems somewhat.

As for the resource extraction mechanics themselves, I don't think this is solvable within the framework of an open world survival/sandbox game, and I feel that the concept of this genre of game would still exist without colonialism. As I've said before, activities like building, farming, and exploration exist apart from colonialism, and shaping the world around you has been a part of human behavior all throughout history, not necessarily negative.

Your actions not having realistic consequences is pretty much inherent to video games, and from this point of view any simulation game could be viewed as obscuring or erasing the real world consequences of actions. I'm not saying it's not a conversation worth having, but the question we're investigating at this point is like, "what does it say about our society that simulation games exist."

It is a bit annoying how much biodiversity Minecraft lacks, but it is probably impossible to make a video game that truly reflects real world biodiversity. There are 12,000 species of grass alone. You could make Minecraft significantly more biodiverse, but it would still be a frail imitation of reality.

I would appreciate it if the mechanics of Minecraft included a way that damage done to the landscape wasn't so easily reversible, and players had to take actions to restore depleted areas.

Okay I don't even play Minecraft but "The relation between the player and the digital objects we interact with is entirely extraction" kinda sounds like it's crossing the line between good-faith criticism of colonialist tropes in how the player interacts with inhabitants of the world and "playing a game called Minecraft and getting upset when it turns out to be about mining and crafting."

And "mining doesn't make the player get sick or die" is like... okay yeah simulating things like black lung or confined spaces filled with asphyxiating gases or toxic tailings is something that maybe could be made fun in a hardcore simulation game about mining. I think Dwarf Fortress goes into that kind of detail? But a nuanced portrayal of the environmental and sociopolitical effects of extractive industries does not sound like the kind of thing that would work well in a game where you're an individual running around with a pickaxe that's meant to be playable at a casual level by kids.

And making ethical criticisms of a game based on it not doing that is really, really bad-faith. Like, that's on the level of saying Kerbal Space Program is morally bad for not having the spaceport be surrounded by populated areas so your space program will be grounded for a year if you crash in the wrong place, or not simulating the political consequences of a ship with RTGs or nuclear engines having an uncontrolled reentry. Or getting mad that Team Fortress 2 has a respawn mechanic / in-combat healing because being blown up/shot in real life tends to be permanent / depicts an "urban" map as being depopulated and not having civilian casualties.

It's like, okay, you're entitled to your opinion, but throwing in takes like that is counterproductive because people probably aren't going to listen to opinions on video games from someone who either doesn't understand that games are supposed to be fun and punishing the player for interacting with the basic premise of the game is generally poor game design, or does know this but just hates video games on a conceptual level.

(or at least video games about certain topics, but come on, if you're complaining about Steve Minecraft not getting asbestosis it's a good bet that the list of things inoffensive enough for you to consider it okay to make a game about them without adding unfun mechanics on purpose as an ideological cudgel is pretty darn small)

There HAS to be a black lung disease Minecraft mod

some of y'all really expected realism from a game that allows you to SPRINT while carrying 1,234,857.5 Metric tons (2,722,394,880 POUNDS) of gold!?!

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i know that one of the big reasons my posts about disability on here get so many notes is because i’m viewed as more “moderate” & “reasonable” in the ableism i point out. i don’t call out every microagression. i’m not one of those “laughable” antiableists that “calls everything ableism”

that kind of… disgusts me honestly

trust me i would love to talk about how jokes about donald trump needing adult diapers must affect incontinent people who already carry more shame & self hatred because of it than you can imagine, who feel like they’ve lost all dignity, who ONLY ever see their issues talked about as a knee slapping hilarious couldn’t possibly be harmful joke. i’d love to point out that it’s no different than a hilarious joke about him needing a wheelchair & how disability jokes don’t suddenly stop being offensive when they involve poop or don’t immediately call to mind disability if you’re not disabled

i’d love to get into how the most basic & common “morally neutral” insults are antiquated & crass words for mental illness & intellectual disability

how jokes about how people who do x “are weak & won’t survive” or how “stupid people shouldn’t breed” are literally so fucking blatantly rooted in eugenics that it’s impossible to separate them

how “i clearly wasn’t thinking about disabled people when i made this joke that harms disabled people, you’re so extra” isn’t a defense, it’s a fucking indictment

but i really don’t want to open myself, an often house or even bedbound disabled person, up to a resounding chorus of “go outside” because it makes me want to fucking cry that i can’t go outside as much as a “normal person”

the fact of the matter is that the reason pointing out the ableism in “harmless comments” is seen as so silly is that ableism runs so deep in our culture that it’s completely built into the foundation of how we talk & joke. it’s in our basic language, it’s in everything. disability is so tied to inferiority that it’s hard to find any expression of inferiority that can’t be traced back to disability. ableism is so deep rooted that it’s easily seen as outright RIDICULOUS to point out every instance because you would have to think about disability constantly, with every word you choose, to never espouse ableist shit

the solution to that is not to berate the people who god help them somehow find the energy to examine & challenge all of that. it’s not to deny that the ableism is there

please consider the fact that pointing out how deep the roots of ableism go in the way we talk is such a fucking target to paint on yourself on here that even with my majority disabled follower base & thick skin from constant exposure to putrid hatemail for my radical disability activism, i’m terrified to post this & already thinking about deleting it

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the more i learn, the more i think word order is dumb 'cause normal sounding sentences like "siphonophores, I find them fascinating" break the typical SVO word order that english uses.

i'm still unsure about including this type of chaos into my conlangs or how i would even begin to do that without any commas (my conlangs only have the equivalent of a '.' mark) but i hope i will someday have the skill to include it

So ya boi went off today

speed per type of transports

i'm lucky to live relatively close to work so these times aren't to bad, but public transportation is literally slower than walking after you take into account for the bus being late 90% of the time