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The Dire Wolf Is Back

newyorker.com

171–180 of 208 posts

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#171

Unrelated. 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%.

This is like saying people misinterpret the word "awful" or "literally"

There are good reasons to object to using "literally" as a meaningless filler word instead of, say, to mean "this sounds like hyperbole but it isn't". First, there are times when you need to indicate "this sounds like hyperbole but it isn't", and there really isn't a great alternative. Second, there's no point to having a meaningless filler word. If a sentence means exactly the same thing with and without the "literally", why is it there?

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#172
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first robots were toys and wishful thinking. But look at the path that's set us down. Be it a pale shadow or not, this is a first milestone down a path I hope we continue on.

At some point far in the future, humanity will populate an entire planet with custom designed species, something like the engineers from prometheus. If only there were a way to live long enough to see all that.

>... humanity will...

Might*.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#174
post #36

Farmer here. The return of the regular wolf has been a tragedy of historic proportions. Wolves slaughter tons of livestock for fun. Farmers are not allowed to protect their herds at all. What will a dire wolf do to livestock if we bring them back? So dumb.

Where are you based? I’ve never heard this particular whinging before, the wolf populations across most of North America have been completely obliterated.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#175
This is a marketing gimmick and a frankly fraudulent claim. They edited a few genes in a wolf genome and called it a job well done ready for marketing. However, this is not a true recapitulation of the ancient genome of the dire wolf, rather a crude attempt at it. I’m not impressed.

Re: The Dire Wolf Is Back

#177

Unrelated. 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%.

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