Rats are known to be more intelligent than us. When it comes to problem solving in as short a time as possible they win. Humans are not the samrtest animals, we are the animals capable of learning through abstract means. Our brains can encode lessons and decode them with nothing more than language. That’s what separates us. We thankfully have less need of intelligence than other animals. Despite appearances, we are the wisest animals rather than the smartest.
CRISPR is probably the technology I’m most terrified of. Designer babies, genetic bottlenecking, eugenics, the elimination of certain neurotypes, and probably millions of far worse consequences we can’t even concieve of and will be less capable of conceiving of when we narrow our species down based on what rich idiots think are the best traits for all people.
I’ve always wanted to experience what it must have been like at the school of Athens.
Heat itself is limited and one day at the end of eons, the entire universe will come to an absolute halt with total and complete stillness of all that is forevermore. At least materially.
This is a little difficult for me to reconcile. Dialect is the best way to determine an ethnicity, and Southern culture is more than the stereotypes (although they indeed often apply). I have only ever lived in the Southern US, and there are cultural factors here which don’t exist elsewhere. Our cultural heritage is significantly more based in West African tradition than for example the Northeast or the Midwest and the specific mix of influences we have here is different than anywhere else. Even though this is the case, there is also a very real association among white southerners to the Confederacy, and this African influenced dialect of white American English is associated with antebellum white supremacy among southern whites which certainly caused me to avoid speaking like that when I was growing up. I really wish the development would have been in the direction of embracing our entire cultural heritage with pride rather than abandon everything about it to assimilate to a generic white American culture. It’s kind of an improvement, but the improvement could have been keeping the best aspects of what we have here. Reparations and reconciliation could have been a thousand times better, but white supremacy is what it is so here we are.
Songbirds fascinate me. I hope we can decode some crow oral history one day.