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flora_explora

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flora_explora ,
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All those masturbating flowers are weirder xD

flora_explora ,
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Fascinating that the only aboveground part of the plant is its flower! Hard to imagine how it is parasitizing some vines underground and then all of a sudden produces this monster of a flower!

Although it is the largest flower, it isn't the largest inflorescence haha. But apparently both this plant and the one with the largest inflorescence (Amorphophallus titanum) both smell like something rotting and are so huge. I mean, shouldn't it be easier to attract flies?

flora_explora ,
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I don't get it. If the sting of U. pelulifera already contains bufotenin, what genetic change would be needed for a psychedelic sting? Wikipedia says bufotenin is a psychedelic substance and a DMT analog.

Fun fact: while searching for this, I've found that apparently some people seem to have elevated levels of bufotenin in their pee. Could be another source...

flora_explora ,
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Oh, I thought that it was qualitatively already a psychedelic sting. But yeah, quantity is key here xD

flora_explora ,
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If a crush of you is asking for nudes, maybe you should reconsider if the person is really that great. Asking for nudibranchs, on the other hand, would be an indicator of a much nicer person :)

flora_explora ,
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We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn't make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn't Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn't been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I've never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.

My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They're really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.

Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P

flora_explora ,
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If you actually wanted a phylogenetic tree to scale you would end up with a huuuge tree that has many more branches because it obviously is not as simple as depicted above. Take birds for example: There are all the dinosaurs in between that weren't birds but have their own branches. It has actually been a tough question where to draw the line between dinosaurs and birds (there is a whole article on wiki). And if you have any paraphyletic groups in your tree it gets even messier! If you are already displaying other groups at the subfamily level, you should then display all groups at this level.

All this is to say that the level of detail contained in a phylogenetic tree (or any graph for that matter) is highly dependent on the information you want to convey. Ideally you should draw it as detailed as necessary and as simplified as possible. In this case, we get all the information that is necessary but are not overwhelmed with facts that if you draw Squamata (lizards and snakes), you would also have to draw Rhynchocephalia (monotypic order) in.

flora_explora ,
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Useful comment!

The meme is the other way around though. The price tag in the meme is for researchers to pay so their article gets published in the journal. And it will be an open access article, so people who want to read it won't have to pay anything. What's so crazy about this is the huge prize tag for publishing your paper. It cannot be that costly to run an online journal.

flora_explora ,
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What? How can this be true? "The generic masculine is gender-neutral"? You see where you made a mistake? German and most other languages revolve around a pretty strong gender hierarchy and patriarchy. So no, its default is definitely not gender neutral! I would be in favor of a true neutral. But we would have to come up with a new form.

flora_explora ,
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Nope, seeing men as the default and considering everyone else as a secondary option is already a discrimination of the latter. I know that "alle Schüler" is referring to everyone in class, but it is not gender neutral. It assumes male students if not specified otherwise.

It seems like you don't acknowledge the existence of patriarchal violence or power. A discussion is probably futile in this case because our value systems are fundamentally different.

flora_explora ,
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OK, keep living in your fantasy...

flora_explora ,
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This is especially true when you are talking with people in various languages and they all want you to know the common name of an organism.

More confusing is that I know some organisms only by their common name, some by both names and most only by scientific names.

iNaturalist gives always gives me the scientific names first but varies in common names between the different local variants. It is confusing if some are in English, others in German or Spanish etc.

flora_explora ,
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If you zoom in, you can see that the "beak" is behind the leg in the foreground actually.

This got me interested and I looked up heteropteran mouthparts. The best description I could find was here. Apparently the segmented larger part of the beak here is the labium giving support to the stylus. The stylus is the blackish tube that runs from the head through the labium.

flora_explora ,
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My intuitive explanation would be that all things have different states in which they can be: solid, fluid/liquid and gaseous. It just depends on how cold or hot it is what state the material is in. Even oxygen can be fluid at sufficiently low temperatures and metals gaseous at really high temperatures. (This varies with pressure, but maybe this gets too complicated.)

So when ice gets too warm (because it isn't in the freezer anymore for example), it changes its state to a liquid. You can imagine all molecules to be in various interactions with each other. When it is cold for them, they snuggle together and form a solid clump. When it gets warmer they begin to dance and not be as close anymore. They sway together and form a fluid. But when they are really hot they are even further away from each other so now they are pretty lose, forming a gas.

When water is in the form of ice it means that the water molecules are cold and snuggle together. As they get warmed by their environment they slowly begin to not be as close together anymore, so they slowly melt and form water.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

But who are we to judge when shoplifting is appropriate or not? Also, if you are shoplifting to spite the capitalist system, you are doing society a favor. If you are shoplifting in a small self-owned store that is struggling itself, this would be less than ideal. But all other large corporate-owned shops are ethically OK to shoplift imo.

flora_explora ,
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Yes, but the person I was commenting on judged people who were shoplifting for "fun"

flora_explora ,
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All I found about that gitlab incidence sounded like it was one single event and more importantly that they've learned from it. So I don't get the critique there. But yeah, apparently they've had a security hole a few days ago.

flora_explora ,
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I get your point. But isn't it in the interest of large tech companies that their users stay as unknowing and uninformed as possible? They don't want you to know how to actually tinker with their systems, how to change stuff yourself or have any control over technology at all. The more docile people are, the better they can sell their products (both the actual product to the people and the people's data to their consumers). And so there are those people who are not OK with being on a dumbed-down system because they want to know how it works and have control over it, so they go over to Linux.

This is not too different from modern cars that no one can really repair on their own. Consumers are totally dependent on the company producing the car. And planned obsolescence can be implemented even better in a system that is out of the control of the user.

Another point is that huge tech companies often have the most comfort and ease in their products. Yeah sure, they have the means to make it so. But this automatically makes leaving these platforms/products so much more uncomfortable. Consumers are already so uninformed but dependent on tech that they would obviously stir towards the more comfortable situation.

Using tools (be it digital or manual) you can actually control sure is more work and has a certain learning curve. No one denies this. But from a political standpoint I think it is important for people to have control over the tools they use, over their own life. Let's not allow capitalism to take away even more freedom and control from us as it already took.

flora_explora ,
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While I agree in principle with you (except for where a socialist state is basically capitalism?!), I disagree very much with your condescending tone. The other person you were commenting on has obviously not got what you meant and you dismissed them outright as a tankie.

I just listened a bit into the video until the guy talked about that the means have to be in line with ends. If you are a prick like this to other people enjoying your power of knowledge over them you definitely won't get to a compassionate community free of hierarchies. Same goes for the guy in the video, reeking of male privilege.

So why not give people a chance to learn something? (Except if they are trolling of course.)

flora_explora ,
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Other people already commented that ADHD symptoms usually are experienced by neurotypical as well but that the degree differs.

To give an example: I tend to get really sucked in in some stuff that interests me, spending hours on end learning something new etc. Often to the point that I postpone to go to pee or eat etc. But if I have to learn something I'm not interested in, it often gives me mental discomfort. I feel tired and like I cannot pay attention to anything. Once that annoying thing is out of the way I feel fine again. Being able to stay up all night to learn about something else. This is really annoying with anything that has to do with paperwork. Like I said, I get mental and sometimes even physical discomfort trying to understand how I would have to apply for stuff or what papers I have to hand in somewhere.

flora_explora ,
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First of all, "love yourself first" can be interpreted in various ways. bell hooks certainly meant it in a truly revolutionary, not a individualistic or distractive way.

What you describe sounds awfully much like how the boomer generation has approached live. For ever running away from personal problems by always keeping busy and distracting themselves. Sure, at least you are fighting fascism. A lot of leftists I know put all their energy into activism until they burn out. And often I suspect that they are running away from their own problems.

And sure, spending all your time with trying to self-love is obviously not the solution either. But it sure would help so much if people would reflect more upon their own emotional state and be more compassionate with themselves and others. This is not to say that we don't need activism to stop fascists though.

flora_explora ,
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While I agree with the acronym, I have to disagree with the statement. I really dislike the look of most Brassicaceae. Especially Brassica oleracea :(

flora_explora ,
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I would be cautious of statements like these. Because this way it is easy to get lost in your own idealization of community gardening. I mean, I agree that we should do more community gardening and that it would probably benefit most people.

But how do you know that industrial farming won't ever be as nutritious/delicious as homegrown? How would you fall back on your own garden in case of a nuclear catastrophe? Wouldn't your soil just be as contaminated? What are your arguments against GMO crops apart from all the obvious economic reasons? Wouldn't be some genetic mutations be really good actually? I mean the food we eat is already heavily bred and mutated, even most homegrown stuff. Try eating a wild carrot or wild apple. Also, the article you shared regarding the antidepressant properties of soil makes some same mistakes. It is overly idealistic. The actual underlying study is much less ambitious and I'm not sure you can really claim that "working with soil has natural antidepressant properties ".

I love cooking and don't really like eating out. But if a canteen/cafeteria is run well, it can sure cook much larger quantities of food that are just as delicious and nutritious. It just scales better. I would argue the same is true for agriculture. (Although we definitely would need to change agriculture by a lot!)

flora_explora ,
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This is certainly true for our modern agriculture today. But is this really true for any possible industrial agriculture? Couldn't we also have a plant based industrial agriculture leaving domesticated animals out of the equation altogether? Sure, we are a far way off from that. But I think it would be achievable and that we should aim for it.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Not only that. But our agriculture is so centered around animals that we also have a huge surplus of manure (the animals' feces, horn shavings, basically anything left of them) that we then use on all kinds of plant crops. It is so baked into the system that it will be a long way before we can really get a animal-free agriculture...

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Wow there, you assume I was arguing in bad faith but I was just genuinely curious to discuss this. No need in being so rude.

I think you still got a lot mixed up here. When I was talking about GMO plants I didn't talk about all the awful practices of today's capitalist corporations. But GMO in itself could be great for feeding many people in a world after capitalism. Glyphosat and other pesticides are really not the same as GMO. Do you actually know what GMO means and how it works? I'm not necessarily a fan of GMO and think we should be very cautious with it. But just dismissing it as obviously evil without understanding what it means is wrong imo.

Similarly I think it is not really clear what we discuss when er talk about industrial agriculture. In my mind it is solely the production of agricultural crops at a large scale and by means of employing machines. It seems like you think of it like our modern capitalist agriculture. This thread was originally about how to feed huge populations of people and I think we will need industrial agriculture. However, what we understand today under industrial agriculture is just one way of doing it. I obviously know that today's conventionally farmed crops and monocultures are really bad for biodiversity and the environment. And I sure want to see then gone just like you. But even organic farming relies a lot on industrial agriculture. And I don't think it is really true that homegrown crops in small community gardens are necessarily more nutritious or delicious than organically+industrially farmed crops.

And this was my overall point. Just because you feel like something tastes/looks better doesn't mean it is actually better. That's what I mean by idealization. I don't think we get that far just claiming some practices are evil and others are good.

I'm gardening myself and sure it does help me with my mental health. But that is because I can choose to work in the garden whenever I feel like it. But if I had to work on a farm because we need all the people working the fields, it would certainly not improve but rather deteriorate my mental and physical health. But still, this has nothing to do with your claim that soil bacteria actually function as natural antidepressants.

And please seek help with your anger issues if you haven't already. It is totally off to call someone "disingenuous bastard" if they just try to start a debate. (Just to be sure: I don't mean this in a passive-aggressive way.)

flora_explora ,
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Wtf is wrong with you?

flora_explora ,
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Wow, thanks! What an interesting read :O (But also really sad to watch the video on the templeos site)

flora_explora ,
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Great video, thanks! Regarding the over representation of certain concepts/things I have been disappointed from day one by generative AI. If you want it to draw you something obscure it miserably fails and tries to fall back on stuff it knows. Also all the discriminatory biases generative AI has about different people because of lacking data sets. It is very obvious that it cannot "outperform" its own data input (like the exciting curve in the video) but that it will rather stagnate.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Wouldn't you then have to run the AI locally on a machine (which probably draws a lot of power and memory) or use it via cloud (which depends on bandwidth just like a video call). I don't really see where this technology could actually be useful. Sure, if it is only a minor computation just like if you take a picture/video with any modern smartphone. But computing an entire face and voice seems much more complicated than that and not really feasible for the usual home device.

flora_explora ,
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Fair point, I agree.

flora_explora ,
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There is definitely some german in that word!

flora_explora ,
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What? This is saying that the dudes already so detached from reality that they don't find any women should even further detach from reality. If you are an open-minded cis dude who respects women and sees them as equal human beings you'll have no problem finding anyone.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

OK, let me rephrase this into "if you are ... you will be as likely as cishet women to find someone to date". My point was that cishet men may have it hard to find someone because they are not catching up with progressive and emancipatory values. There are many many heteropessimisstic or otherwise frustrated women out there searching for a guy that does not treat them like shit.

But sure, if you don't have the capacity for a social life or for dating then obviously this won't be as easy. My comment was a response to the premise that cishet guys have it harder in dating and that they should be allowed to scam people.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

It seems very annoying to me when cishet dudes whine about how hard they have it. It might be true, but the problem is usually that they've been brought up with a misogynistic worldview and hegemonic masculinity. That's what I referred to by calling them detached from reality.

It is like a narcissistic person telling you how hard their life is while abusing you. You can empathize with them because they sure have a hard life. But as long as they're not self-aware and reflect on their doings, I won't have much empathy with them. Same goes for cis men.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Oh hello, you again! Sorry, won't discuss with you any further about this topic. Nothing new to be said and you newer replied to all the scientific studies I gave you why a high percentage of pwNPD tend to abuse others.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Nope, I disagree. I see shades of gray and have some few friends that happen to be cishet guys. But I know very few cis men that are not bigots, feel entitled, treat women like inferiors, etc.

But, do you agree with the original statement I replied to?

flora_explora , (edited )
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, it's pretty disheartening and even frightening. I don't know how to educate men on feminist ideas and get them on board. And being antifeminist doesn't even benefit them that much. There are so many men living their life miserable and ending up in jail because of their toxic masculinity and societal expectations of men. And I'm certainly interested in helping cis men get better, reconnect with their emotions and learn about emancipation. But at the same time I don't see how people who are not cis men can do so much to really help them. We are pretty busy surviving them and supporting each other.

flora_explora ,
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Yes, it is really a frustrating situation. Since you seem to be a man, maybe you can be a good example to your nephew? But well, not so easy either unfortunately :(

flora_explora ,
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But tiktok the company is? And there are certainly also people on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and even Lemmy rallying to support Palestine. And that’s what you tried to avoid with your “argument” in the first place, that many us companies are far worse in spreading misinformation. How does your one very specific point prove anything? And why focus on this one at all? Meanwhile fox news especially has been rallying against all kinds of minorities since forever in the US. You have very weak arguments here, maybe you just want to have tiktok banned? But then just say so outright.

flora_explora ,
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Playing the devil’s advocate here: Under capitalism, you could also see it as a provision of services where the landlord invests in the means of production (the building) and provides the service of letting people stay there for a certain amount of money. The offered services include the maintenance of the building. If a landlord is keeping a building poorly maintained and/or expects an over the top rent, then this is simply a bad service.

But well, this obviously doesn’t work out as soon as you consider a safe place to live a basic human right that mustn’t be commodified.

flora_explora ,
@flora_explora@beehaw.org avatar

Well, I tried to find any arguments that could speak in favor of landlords. From the additional comments I got here it is pretty obvious that there isn’t really any justification for housing to be in the hands of landlords.

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