I think these options are unbiased enough for @staff to accept a blaze if anyone with money wants to give it some reach now that we're going site-wide here.
Can we get. one million votes
Biologists and paleontologists categorize lifeforms using clades, which represent natural evolutionary groupings. Clades are defined using the following formats:
- Node-based definitions: The most recent common ancestor of Species X and Species Y, plus all of its descendants. This can also be phrased as "the least inclusive clade containing X and Y", or in shorthand, (X + Y) Example: Strigiformes (owls) is defined as the most recent common ancestor of Tyto alba [barn owl] and Strix aluco [tawny owl], plus all its descendants. There are two lineages of living owls: barn owls (Tytonidae) and everything else (Strigidae). This way, Strigiformes contains all living owls and excludes all birds that we don't consider owls.
- Stem- or branch-based definitions: The earliest ancestor of Species X which is not also an ancestor of Species Y, plus all of its descendants. This can also be phrased as "the most inclusive clade containing X but not Y", or in shorthand, (X > Y) or (X ~ Y). Example: Tyrannosauroidea (tyrannosaurs) is defined as the earliest ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex which is not shared with Ornithomimus, Velociraptor, or Troodon, plus all of its descendants. This way, Tyrannosauroidea includes everything more closely related to T. rex than to other major coelurosaur lineages.
- Apomorphy-based definitions: The earliest ancestor of Species X which has Trait Z, plus all of its descendants. Apomorphy-based definitions are very contentious and not commonly used, because oftentimes the choice of trait is arbitrary and it can be hard to determine exactly where this trait first appears. Example: Pterosauria (pterosaurs) is defined as the earliest ancestor of Pterodactylus antiquus [the first pterosaur named] to have a giant fourth finger supporting a wing membrane, plus all of its descendants. This way, the clade Pterosauria includes everything that we traditionally consider a pterosaur, and excludes non-winged pterosaur relatives (e.g. lagerpetids).
Clades, by definition, include all descendants of the most recent common ancestor (for node-based clades), or the earliest ancestor (for stem- or apomorphy-based clades). This is called monophyly. We do this because there is simply no way to objectively say where a clade stops. You can't stop being something's descendant, so there's no objective way to draw a line where you stop being a member of Group J and start being a member of Group K. Instead, Group K would be considered to be within Group J.
DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one
"Bottom does not mean sub" might as well be occult knowledge to some of y'all
call my man shredded lettuce because he be a sub topping
i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck
How the fuck does his have less than 200k after setting the internet on fire for months
This lack of notes is probably a big part of why TikTok seems to think they invented the meme.
They think WHAT?!
would you rather be on a five hour drive with a thomas sanders fan or a hazbin hotel fan. and you can’t crash the car i’m sorry
thomas sanders fan because they might be hung. gimme another
got any rationale for this or is it more of an intuitive thing
honestly i gauge all situations with a ‘will this involve me sucking dick’ metric and a five-hour two-person car trip is a high background reading so i’m mostly playing in the margins here? but thomas sanders is theater kid is horny is might be hung whereas hazbin hotel is not unhorny but horny in a currency i don’t accept. i hope you can understand.
i dont, but you seem to, and thats what matters
manager i cant come to work today i forgot how to mimic the behavior of a human. being
Kind of a Reddit AITA post but sometimes it is a little funny to fuck with people in ways that deliberately conform to a stereotype of what they must think of you. the other day I was talking to my friend and I randomly said that I wanted a pet chimpanzee. I'd dress it in person clothes (dungarees and hats) and I'd teach it to love science fiction. And this girl nearby was like "you know how dangerous those things are, right? Also how unethical it is to keep an ape as your pet for your own amusement" and I was already seeing where the conversation was going so I was pretending ignorance like "yea but it wouldn't just be for my amusement. It would have practical points too." And she ignored that statement entirely to say "Well chimpanzees can rip faces off" and I was like. What's the most frustrating thing I can say now. Finally settled on "Mine wouldn't do that though." and you could tell she wanted to hurt me very very badly. Like a chimpanzee would if I had one as a pet
all of those idiots going into STEM.. you can’t smoke that part, what you want is the bud
[drinks my jarritos like a comically hypermasculine brooding alcoholic character]
having edgy ocs is soooo embarassing like yeah this is johnny... he.. kills people... yeah with a knife and theres blood and stuff yeah... sorry i know...
sex makes you smarter actually . thinking about sex all day (esp if ur on the clock) is enlightened behaviour and if you call sex havers freaks and perverts you go to one million years of hell.
apparently “”limiting my emotional range” and “crushing my libido” are symptoms of the wrong medication, and not, in fact, the sorcerers curse
is that a ds in your pocket or is your penis have 2 screens & play video games
hey evil mario if you can hear me im sorry about the pm news. you have no idea who i am but you actually do. i remember you. evil mario. im calling out to you. i dont know if youll ever see this. evilmario666
evilmario please
I miss my beautiful wife Meursault
Every day I learn of new unique gimmick blogs on tumblr
Honestly, I think it's cool to see cis people adopt and use "nonconforming" pronouns. I saw a cis man state their pronouns were they/them, and I think that's awesome that they're forthcoming with that! I think a lot of cis people think pronoun nonconformity excludes them, but they're completely wrong! Pronoun nonconformity is literally for anybody. If you are a they/them cis man, that's fucking awesome! There will be people who will respect you, and it isn't a world-ending request to be addressed correctly
Trying to get people to realize birds are full on actual no holds barred dinosaurs on the internet is like playing a constant game of whack-a-mole
The game never ends there's just another mole to whack
whack whack whack
I understand that you guys aren't being totally serious, but birds are categorically NOT dinosaurs. They're BIRDS. Being descended from and very similar to an animal does not make them literally the same.
Bats are mammals. If every mammal except for bats went extinct, bats would still be mammals. This is what happened with birds. They're a type of dinosaur that evolved within the dinosaur evolutionary tree, and existed alongside other types of dinosaurs until all those other types of dinosaurs were wiped out. Surviving when the other dinosaurs went extinct doesn't mean they stopped being dinosaurs at any point.
@arctic-nimbus I am not joking, I am being serious. Birds are living dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs are defined as the most recent common ancestor of [Theropods] + [Sauropodomorphs] + [Ornithischians], and ALL OF THAT ANCESTOR'S DESCENDANTS
hence, because birds descend from that ancestor, ALL BIRDS ARE DINOSAURS THE END.
I am a paleontologist and this has been known since 1996 please stop making me play whack a mole. this is googleable. this is on wikipedia. this is in most paleontological sources. this is in the literature. this is in books. this is in jurassic park. this is on this blog in many places. this is on other people's blogs in many places.
this is, or should be, common. knowledge.
fin
Okay, your condescending reply aside, you haven't addressed the elephant in the room which is what I brought up in the other thread. I'm descended from a fish. That doesn't mean I am a fish. You telling me that birds are living dinosaurs doesn't make any difference to me because you haven't made a convincing argument why I should categorize them that way as oppose to another way.
Where do you draw the line between them being living dinosaurs and them being something else?
In biology and paleontology, evolutionary groups (clades) are defined to be monophyletic. That is, a clade contains all descendants of its most recent common ancestor. No lineage ever stops being part of a clade, no matter how much it has evolved. If you're descended from a member of a certain clade, you are in that clade.
Dinosaurs are a clade, which is formally called Dinosauria. Because it's defined as a clade, then everything that is descended from a dinosaur must also be a dinosaur. Ergo, modern birds are a subgroup of the clade Dinosauria.
Think of it this way. Sauropods, ankylosaurs, therizinosaurs, and birds are each very different from their early ancestors, which would have looked kinda like this:
And yet no sauropod, ankylosaur, or therizinosaur ever stopped being a dinosaur, regardless of how much they evolved. So why would birds be any different? By the same standard that Argentinosaurus, Tarchia, or Therizinosaurus are dinosaurs, birds are dinosaurs.
And yes, humans are lobe-finned fish (Sarcopterygii). The standard applies everywhere.
No, humans are not lobe-finned fish.
That's called an absurdity.
Perhaps by your definition of reality, humans are lobe-finned fish, if I accept the schema that you so lovingly shove down my throat.
But there is nothing more or less scientific about looking at lobe-finned fish of today, and comparing them to humans, and finding they are completely different things.
So your argument is inherently an opinion! It is a normative statement, not a fact. Stop representing it as a fact.
but it is fact
just because you don't want it to be doesn't mean it isn't
ROUND 1: ELAINE (seinfeld) VS BEOWULF (beowulf)
the poll is missing.
listen,
I'm listening
do you hear it?
One punch man
THE FLOURISH AND SHEATHE
As a professional swordsman should