It’s not that paying for things is bad. The problem is that good software is vital to digital artists’ income, and both purchasing and learning that software is a substantial investment. When a company sells or otherwise enshittifies their software, the artist is then put in a very hard place. Open-source software is the only way to combat that unfortunately likely scenario. By all means, please pay for that software if you can afford to. Doing so subsidizes usage for less fortunate people who may be able to better their situation as a direct result of your generosity.

They’ve so far used AI to detect all the different parts of a particular whale species’ language, like the different sounds and timing. Deciphering the meaning will be much harder since it’s difficult to observe their behavior, but small land mammals should go much smoother.

Factory farming exists pretty much everywhere though. If just 50% of people reduced their meat intake to an occasional treat, that would go a long way to reducing suffering, improving sustainability, and increasing the availability and affordability of vegan products. That doesn’t mean that any given individual needs to be vegan, just that encouraging widespread veganism is beneficial to everyone.

I’m sorry if my post came off as “Just eat s bunch of soy beans,” because that isn’t what I meant. Rather, it seems viable to eat a lot of plants and supplement with animal products where needed, especially given that there’s also a pill form.

Also I don’t think the 550mg figure is meant to be a recommended minimum intake, but rather a figure where it’s impossible to be deficient. It’s my understanding that a minimum intake of choline hasn’t been established. From Wikipedia:

Insufficient data is available to establish an estimated average requirement (EAR) for choline, so the Food and Nutrition Board established adequate intakes (AIs). For adults, the AI for choline was set at 550 mg/day for men and 425 mg/day for women. These values have been shown to prevent hepatic alteration in men. However, the study used to derive these values did not evaluate whether less choline would be effective, as researchers only compared a choline-free diet to a diet containing 550 mg of choline per day. From this, the AIs for children and adolescents were extrapolated.

Twelve surveys undertaken in 9 EU countries between 2000 and 2011 estimated choline intake of adults in these countries to be 269–468 milligrams per day. Intake was 269–444 mg/day in adult women and 332–468 mg/day in adult men.

I also have medical and economic issues that make it unreasonable to be completely vegan, but that doesn’t mean the world shouldn’t shift towards it. Factory farming isn’t a practice needed to help my conditions, and I doubt you benefit from it either. They could probably use humane and sustainable methods to provide plenty of meat/dairy for medical purposes and pet foods.

And besides, according to this chart, soybeans have higher choline content than most meats. Google also says there’s a shitton of trimethylglycine in wheat. And both come in supplement form. (Not sure how they make them though, so maybe not vegan.)

We can have both with well-placed parking garages, but I’m guessing these people wouldn’t like that either. They want their open space so bad, but they don’t realize how much more room for nature there is when you condense the cars and living spaces a bit. And you save a ton of money on things like plumbing and roofing when responsibility for the building is shared.

Wait, wait, wait. Are you telling me Uno is literally just crazy eights, and that’s why I’ve never seen anyone play crazy eights after like 1993?

I don’t mean to argue against your point (I wouldn’t know); I was just very tickled by the image of a huge beefy man on a tiny little bike.

Are bicycles built for two safe in the first place?

Why are your example humans a heavyweight boxer and a sumo wrestler? Wikipedia says the average North American human adult weighs 180lbs.

It’s interesting that God makes everyone’s genitals perfectly, but he keeps messing up hearts, lips, chromosomes, spines… I guess pobody’s nerfect. (Except for me, because God made me that way.)

There are a number of skills that go into working fast food, and your dismissal of them is part of the problem.

There’s nothing special required to open a restaurant in Sweden, which I think most would agree is a developed country. You need a business license and a food license (unsure how to translate), neither of which requires an education or training, and you need a proper location for preparing and serving food. Employees can be literally anyone off the street. You have to pass health inspections, but the inspectors don’t care much about details if nothing dangerous is going on.

I personally appreciate your example of chef and had to delete the rest of what I had to say because it got way too emotional. It’s a frustrating situation when you’re making people happy by providing a service and still not being rewarded because capitalism.

This is the best I could find on the specific topic: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7888369/

People with visual or hearing sensory impairments had twice the odds of past-year suicidal ideation (OR 2.06; 95% CI 1.17 to 2.73; p<0.001), and over three times the odds of reporting past-year suicide attempt (OR 3.12; 95% CI 1.57 to 6.20; p=0.001) compared with people without these impairments. Similar results were found for hearing and visual impairments separately and co-occurring.

Oh, I see. I thought they communicated much more complex information than that, but it’s very practical for simple directions with no further details.

“Spiders can detect danger coming their way with an early-warning system called eyes.”

Really fantastic book. I did have some notes though. Firstly, if honeybees have such low dpi vision, how can they see each other dance? I assume it’s because they’re experiencing the dance some other way, but how? (Also it’s hella dark in there, isn’t it?)

He says many times that humanity’s umwelt is dominated by sight, but I very much disagree. To lose my hearing or sense of touch would make me feel quite blind, as I use them to perceive things outside my cone of vision constantly. Being in deep water is unnerving for this reason, because I can’t “see” what’s around me, and I have this whole new area below that I can’t hear either. So I have to wonder whether other people feel the way he does or whether my usage is more unique.

He really blew my mind when describing exafference and reafference because these things are reliant on a sense of self in the first place, which means that even the worm in his example must have some form of ego.

A comma can be used to improve readability, but it can also indicate a pause while talking. I feel a pause after “and that” is as common as no pause. That said, I cannot know if that was the poster’s intent; it’s only my interpretation of the usage.

It’s not legal to carry a water pistol full of acid either.

Hope he remembered his seeds.

Sounds like The Stand. Are they any good?

The “rules” of a language describe how people use the language, but those conventions are subject to constant change because communication is a collaborative art. Some might say it’s better to use a semicolon rather than a comma, for example.

I feel like any linguist upset by non-prescriptive language needs to maybe reconsider their life choices. Imagine telling someone they’re painting incorrectly or being mad at the discovery of a new species.