I never realised the Dire Wolf was a real historical animal, not just a fantasy one like the Owlbear.
There's a reason horses are so fast; they co-evolved in the Americas with something they had to outrun.
[deleted]
The Dire Wolf Is Back
111–120 of 208 posts
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#112Here's[0] a recent editorial about Colossal, the company behind this. Basically, they make some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park. Naturally, there's some real moral dilemmas that they gloss over in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay to be able to say "I saw a Mammoth!" [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editor…
> in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay Perhaps they could have a coupon day?
Someone's rewatched recently :)
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fact, Apple has invested so much money in the iPhone. The only way they can make it work is if they sell the iPhone only to billionaires. Yes, just like Disney. The cost of Disneyland and Disneyworld mean that the only way it could provide a return is if the only people who can attend are the very wealthy. I think my model of the world is very good. It accurately describes things.
iPhones are very expensive. If you own an iPhone, you're already wealthier than a large chunk of the planet.
Oh I see. When you meant "very expensive" you meant "easily accessible for the median American" and when that guy said "wealthy people" you interpreted that to be "the median American". It's true that Europeans and so on are quite poor but the company is in the US. Yep, factually most Africans can't go to Disneyland either.
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#114Unrelated. The article uses the word "decimated". It seems to me a lot of people misinterpret the meaning of this word. It does not mean "kill 90%", but "kill on in every 10" aka 10%.
Semi-related: very few people, even capable professional writers, use "disinterested" correctly.
Interestingly, the macOS Dictionary app (which I believe uses some version of the OED) has this note about the word:
"Ironically, the earliest recorded sense of disinterested is for the disputed sense."
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#115Here's[0] a recent editorial about Colossal, the company behind this. Basically, they make some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park. Naturally, there's some real moral dilemmas that they gloss over in pursuit of the money a few wealthy people will pay to be able to say "I saw a Mammoth!" [0]: https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/editor…
Wealthy people, huh? Well now I’m against it!
Lmao 'wealthy people bad' was definitely the substance of the critique, thank you for your valuable insight.
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. The zoo's expenses will be pretty much fixed, regardless of number of visitors. They'll want as many visitors as possible: there's more money in selling a million cheap tickets per day than there is selling 5 expensive ones! At worst, it'll be a very crowded zoo
Presumably those expenses will be a lot higher than a regular zoo, at least in the short/mid term. I'd assume that translates to relatively costly ticket prices, right?
I dunno. If we assume rational, greedy owners and the costs are fixed(as in, there's a cost per animal, not a cost per visitor), the costs are pretty much irrelevant to pricing. They'll want to maximise income. The parameters that matters are how many visitors you'll get at any given price point, multiplied by that price point.
Ofc, I'm assuming Homo Economicus run this zoo, that might not be accurate irl
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#117The term "dire" in "direwolf" comes from the Latin word "dirus," which translates to "terrible" or "fearsome." This name reflects the wolf's large size and predatory nature, as well as its status as a formidable hunter during the Pleistocene era.
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
iPhones are very expensive. If you own an iPhone, you're already wealthier than a large chunk of the planet.
Oh I see. When you meant "very expensive" you meant "easily accessible for the median American" and when that guy said "wealthy people" you interpreted that to be "the median American". It's true that Europeans and so on are quite poor but the company is in the US. Yep, factually most Africans can't go to Disneyland either.
Spot on.
If Disneyland claimed to be helping fix world problems like biodiversity loss and climate change, that would be worth criticizing as well.
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#119I think it's ethical, but I hate that it's fake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf#DNA_evidence Look at this caldogram and text
> The sequences indicate the dire wolf to be a highly divergent lineage which last shared a most recent common ancestor with the wolf-like canines 5.7 million years ago. The study also measured numerous dire wolf and gray wolf skeletal samples that showed their morphologies to be highly similar, which had led to the theory that the dire wolf and the gray wolf had a close evolutionary relationship. The morphological similarity between dire wolves and gray wolves was concluded to be due to convergent evolution. Members of the wolf-like canines are known to hybridize with each other but the study could find no indication of genetic admixture from the five dire wolf samples with extant North American gray wolves and coyotes nor their common ancestor. This finding indicates that the wolf and coyote lineages evolved in isolation from the dire wolf lineage.
There are a lot of extant species that are as closely related as the wolf. Cheating based on phenotype sucks. We want real genetic diversity!
Best case, the female wolves they just just made are suitable mothers for the next round of hybrids, so they converge over time.
Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back
#120So disappointed that this isn't an article about the Grateful Dead
I got really excited that it's about Minecraft's once popular modpack
Dire is still at it. New pack for Minecraft 1.21 updated as recently as a few weeks ago!
https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks/126-ftb-presents-direwol...
You can even see some history/stats for all the Direwolf packs: https://feed-the-beast.com/modpacks?search=direwolf&sort=fea...