51–60 of 66 posts
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How did it change your life?
It made me realize that “important events” are meaningless empathy theater, with the goal of desensitizing people until they care more about random folks dying on the other side of the planet than about the person sitting next to them on the bench.
It’s surprising how much this headline affects me. Who doesn’t like penguins? And seals are nice, but penguins are so likeable. We’ve really ruined everything.
I love penguins, and this news has me close to tears My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know. It makes me so sad how we humans know…
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2024/01/08/cincinnati-...
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I love penguins, and this news has me close to tears My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know. It makes me so sad how we humans know…
Cincinnati Zoo? I saw them perform their march the other year. I think they stopped because the flock was getting too old https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2024/01/08/cincinnati-...
It's a pretty fun little event. The penguins seem to really enjoy it, they're always checking out the crowd
Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal. But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction? I'm not con…
Ignoring any ethical or esthetic arguments, every species of living beings that disappears today, regardless if it is a beetle or a whale, is a definitive loss of very important information, whose value we are not yet able to assess. It is equivalent to the burning of a library containing very valuable research papers containing results obtained after many years of work, for which there are no copies elsewhere.
Despite the huge progress of technology during the last few centuries, there are still a lot of essential things that living beings can do, but which we have not learned yet how to do. An example is the energy-efficient capture of the diluted carbon dioxide from air and a huge number of other chemical processes that would be very useful, if mastered by humans.
Every species that is lost might be the one who could save us a lot of work in the future, when we will become able to determine in much more detail how a living being works, which could provide solutions to important technical problems, some of which are actually critical for the survival of humanity, because our current technologies cannot sustain human life without help from a great number of different kinds of living beings.
For some species that have disappeared or that are disappearing we have DNA sequences. However that is not the complete information about a living being, which would allow its reconstruction.
We are still unable to read the complete information about a living cell, because there is a lot of necessary information besides that stored in nucleic acid sequences. It is likely that we will become able to read the entire information in less than a century from now, but by then it may be too late and a very large number of species will be already lost, and even the survival of the human species is not certain, due to its great median stupidity.
Even for the species where you see claims that the DNA has been sequenced, that is only very seldom true.
Especially for the eukaryotic species, where the structure of the genome is much more complex, with many chromosomes and epigenetic information, for a very small fraction of the "sequenced" genomes we have complete information, e.g. including the actual composition of the chromosomes and the locations of the genes on them, which may be important for gene regulation. For most of the existing sequenced genomes, we only have the sequences of a great number of random fragments of the genomes, from which we can make an estimation of the full genome, by examining the overlaps between the known fragments and hoping that they cover most of the genome.
There are only relatively few genomes that are known with great accuracy. Even the human genome, whose study had priority, has features that were finally discovered only decades after the first announcement claiming (falsely) that the sequencing of the human genome has been finished. Determining the sequence of the last unknown 1% of a genome can take more than the sequencing of the first 99% of the genome.
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>“What am I supposed to do with that information?” ...Feel some sorrow? Think a bit about what could cause such a thing? Because one day, it may happen at your kid's school... And it may be your own kid. An absence of both empathy and curiosity aren't exactly a response to be proud of. An unconscious life. The kind that leads to, one day, spouting the standard response: "I never imagined it could happen to me".
Sorrow for people you don’t know? That’s a category error, and soundbites like that are a big part of the reason why many people now find it difficult to feel genuine sorrow.
You can even feel something for animals.
But thank you for another confirmation that the prevailing mindset in America today isn't the Western tradition of Humanism, but a regression towards raw egoism and naked psychopathy. Elon "Empathy is a weakness" Musk, Kristi "I shot my misbehaving puppy" Noem, Trump...
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How did it change your life?
It made me realize that “important events” are meaningless empathy theater, with the goal of desensitizing people until they care more about random folks dying on the other side of the planet than about the person sitting next to them on the bench.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a bird can't fly and isn't a super fast runner, they end up as food. Tale as old as time.
They're going extinct by habitat loss from climate change.
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Sorrow for people you don’t know? That’s a category error, and soundbites like that are a big part of the reason why many people now find it difficult to feel genuine sorrow.
Sorrow for your human brethren isn't a category error or a soundbite . It is basic decency. Or do you care only about your tribe ? You can even feel something for animals. But thank you for another confirmation that the prevailing mindset in America today isn't the Western tradition of Humanism, but a regression towards raw egoism and naked psychopathy. Elon "Empathy is a weakness" Musk, Kristi "I shot my misbehaving…
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Cincinnati Zoo? I saw them perform their march the other year. I think they stopped because the flock was getting too old https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2024/01/08/cincinnati-...
Calgary Zoo: https://www.calgaryzoo.com/events/penguin-walk/ It's a pretty fun little event. The penguins seem to really enjoy it, they're always checking out the crowd
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Calgary Zoo: https://www.calgaryzoo.com/events/penguin-walk/ It's a pretty fun little event. The penguins seem to really enjoy it, they're always checking out the crowd
That's really cool! If I'm up near Calgary in the future I'm definitely checking that out. I miss the penguin march they would do here, but I understand why they stopped
The Penguin walk doesn't run all year, something like Nov-March. It's ended for this year unfortunately