I think it’s very much an artefact of religious attitudes at the time science started advancing during the Industrial Revolution, which held up humans as being superior to animals (and also that people before the Industrial Revolution were ignorant and unenlightened). Given that we have legal records from the centuries before that, where animals were held to have legal/moral equivalency to humans (this includes incidences of animals being punished for crimes, of course, but there’s also a case of a court ruling in favour of weevils having rights over a particular field, so the farmer had to let them have it - the record of whether the weevils abided by this agreement was… eaten by weevils), I suspect that back then people were a lot more open to the idea that animals had many of the same capabilities as us. Christianity, especially the “humans have dominion over everything else” strains of it that we’ve had for the last 150 years or so, likely does not reflect the attitude of all humans for the entirety of history - although of course in the past, people didn’t have the scientific knowledge needed to prove it conclusively.

I got Cat Quest for free in a giveaway a number of months ago, and still haven’t gotten around to playing it. Might as well grab Cat Quest 2 also.

It wouldn’t be an authentic experience if the submarine didn’t randomly implode.

Please learn elementary anatomy and physiology. You don’t have to get a medical degree. High school level knowledge will do.

Or failing that, learn enough critical thinking skills to be able to tell the difference between a reputable source and a wannabe celebrity influencer who will say anything for attention.

I don’t have a huge level of knowledge of anatomy or physiology, but I can tell the NHS website is going to have more accurate and trustworthy information than an attention-seeking influencer.

I read the article. Apparently it only really works with hard water - that’s water with a high concentration of calcium carbonate. At high temperatures, the calcium carbonate becomes a solid, trapping the microplastics inside it, which is then removed from the water with a regular filter.

“Humans have been looking at fingerprints since we existed, but nobody ever noticed this similarity until we had our AI analyze it.”

“Their argument that these shapes are somewhat correlated between fingers has been known from the early start of fingerprinting, when it was done manually, and it has been documented for years. I think they have oversold their paper, by lack of knowledge, in my view. I’m happy that they have rediscovered something known”

Just two quotes, one from the author of the study, the other from a forensics expert. I have to admit, taking these quotes together genuinely makes this kind of funny. Excited student thinks he’s discovered something new and world-changing. Expert goes “yeah, we’ve known about that for years, but I’m happy you’re excited.” It feels telling that the authors of the paper are noted as having no knowledge of forensics. I think such a tool would have more use if forensics experts had some input about what they actually need from an AI tool.

I feel like the level of mass education about the lack of free will required to make sure all judges and juries understand that murderers have no free will, would probably end up educating a lot of people with violent tendencies that they have no free will too - and if free will does exist, they now have an excuse not to even try to control themselves. Which the article did note has been observed in other studies.

If someone kills a bunch of people no amount of philosophical quibbling and defining is going to make me think that person should be allowed to continue living in society, justice simply couldn’t be a concept at all in the absence of some form of free will

Wouldn’t it require an act of free will to decide that the murderer had no free will and therefore shouldn’t be jailed? If we have no free will and are always acting in response to that complex array of dominos, then the judge and jury sending the murderer to prison have the same amount of choice as the murderer.

Given that people do largely trust the NHS on other matters, I don’t think it’s a general distrust of the NHS. They’re not refusing other medical care. They’re just easily led by the loudest voices.

I recently got vaccinated for measles (along with mumps and rubella). I probably was vaccinated for them as a child, but the medical records have gotten lost over the last 40 years, so my doctors office weren’t sure if I had or not. The vaccines can’t harm me as an adult, so I figured why not just make sure?

Vaccination rates are dropping in the UK too, and that isn’t accounted for by a distrust of big pharma or the government - because people trust the NHS.

I think stupid people were always stupid. This isn’t that wise people are becoming stupid. They were always stupid - unable to form opinions of their own, in the past they did what authoritative voices locally told them to do (ie, doctors). Now they do what the loud people on the internet tell them to do.

I am aware. But it still seems a little dishonest to claim at this stage that the rockets are “fully reusable”, when explosions are not only highly likely, but an inherent part of the process. The end product is going to have to be reused a lot to balance out how wasteful the development process is.

I kind of suspect that Musk just thinks explosions are cool, and is using this “we’ll slap something together and see how far it gets into the process before it explodes” approach as an excuse to have lots of explosions. Spaceships that work as intended and don’t explode are too boring for someone with the emotional depth of a 13 year old edgelord.

I feel like these “fully reusable” starships would be more reusable if they exploded less often…

Haha, I’m loving the idea of an inbred orca cult.

I feel like there’s actually an interesting xenofiction concept there…

They are remarkably inspiring for such tiny little critters.

I guess maybe the species that are exclusively herbivorous. Obviously Bambi and horses and a lot of other ungulates don’t qualify. But how about the humble flat periwinkle? They spend their whole lives just vibing on seaweed, which is the only thing they have the equipment to eat. They literally just wander around licking seaweed, while being bright yellow.

“Magical orca effect” is the best terminology I’ve ever heard for this! I’ve found it tends to be focused on the fish-eating orcas, like the Southern Residents, while the mammal-eating ones seem to get quietly written off as “not real orcas”, because they dispel the “magic” of peaceful, highly moral, family-oriented orcas that people like to picture.

Of course, if one starts assigning human moral values to orcas, the Southern Residents could certainly be described as these magical, loyal beings who love their families above all else. But equally, given they only breed and interact with their own family (approx 70 individuals, they’re horrifically inbred at this point), even to the exclusion of other neighbouring orca populations that share their culture… they start looking like a weird, isolationist, fundamentalist cult, where the grandmothers arrange for their sons to marry their granddaughters because the people living in the next town are just “not the right kind of people”.

“If we judge them by human moral values, then that includes the bad as well as the good, so maybe we shouldn’t assign our moral values to them at all” was not a terribly popular opinion in the cetacean-loving community. Neither was thinking other cetaceans are interesting too. (Beaked whales forever! ❤️)

One of the reasons that I don’t spend much time in online communities focused around cetaceans anymore, despite having a lifelong interest in these animals, is the rather zealous and over-the-top idealisation of orcas, especially the Southern Resident population, as being more noble and moral than humans. And, indeed, more noble and moral than other cetaceans - I once had a far too long conversation with someone who is convinced that the Southern Residents are better than all other whales and dolphins because, unlike dolphins, they don’t kidnap and murder baby porpoises. So I have to admit to feeling some glee to read that the Southern Residents have been… kidnapping and murdering baby porpoises. Turns out they’re not so noble and moral after all.

Orcas are amazing animals, to be sure. They are genuinely intelligent beings, and their capacity to learn new skills is both fascinating and worthy of admiration. But lets admire them for what they are: just as wickedly clever and capable of cruelty as any other animal on the planet, including humans. It does neither us nor them any good to put them up on a pedestal as somehow morally superior to us.

Alternative option: when a kid eats a magnet, use a really huge magnet to get that magnet out of the kid. Guaranteed to make sure there are no repeat offenders.

Awww, and I thought it was just about making astronauts look pretty?