Search results for tag #evolution
BroderickRodell: "Our #past has so much to teach us...we don't need to romanticize or denigrate it. We need to embrace what can serve us in our #evolution & relinquish that which stagnates us. We need a story that recognizes our #collectiveinterest in #workingtogether. bit.ly/4hkaVA6
🧛🌱 Meet Hydnora africana, one of the strangest #plants on #Earth.
This South African parasite lives entirely underground until it’s time to #flower. When it does, it produces a fleshy, alien-looking bloom that smells like a carcass to lure in #beetles. It then traps the #insects in a slippery chamber, releasing them only after they’ve successfully moved its pollen around.
👉 https://www.discoverwildlife.com/flowers/hydnora-africana-rotting-smell
#botany #nature #science #biology #southafrica #africa #evolution #ecology #stem #learning #education #wildlife
Tiny, long-armed dinosaur leads to rethink of dinosaur miniaturization
Small size seems to have come before a change in diet for a tiny dinosaur lineage.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/tiny-long-armed-dinosaur-leads-to-rethink-of-dinosaur-miniaturization/#biology #dinosaurs #evolution #paleontology #science
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Artist’s conception of a small dinosaur covered in fluffy tan feathers.
A unicorn-like Spinosaurus found in the Sahara
A unique head spike and fish-eating jaws help make sense of these dinosaurs.
Archive: ia: https://s.faithcollapsing.com/ittpz
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/a-unicorn-like-spinosaurus-found-in-the-sahara/#biology #dinosaurs #evolution #paleontology #science #spinosaurus
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Artist’s conception of the new Spinosaurus species, showing long, narrow jaws and spike on the top of its head.
Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
The first signs of life here are 4 billion years old.
Multicellular life didn't arise until about 1 billion years ago.
This suggests that life is easy, but complex life is hard.
Some folks say that in those 3 billion years of single celled life "nothing really happened." To them, multicellularity represents a unique and profound leap in complexity—the moment where life became interesting.
But the fossil record can't show us what was going on inside those cells. I imagine the very first life was little more than a self-sustaining chemical reaction in a bubble. How much more sophisticated did life become in 3 billion years?
Single-celled life learned to feed itself in every conceivable way, to defend itself, to colonize every corner of the planet. It became extremely good at surviving and at evolving. It may look simple, but it is not, and that sophistication was necessary for multicellular life to evolve.
Toll!
7.2mio Jahre alter Oberschenkel einer "Frau" wurde in Bulgarien gefunden. Der Oberschenkelhals und die Ansätze von schweren Gesäßmuskeln lassen auf den aufrechten Gang schließen.
Erwähnt außerdem: den 11mio Jahre alten Schwaben Udo, ein Danuvius guggenmosi , der auch schon aufrecht gehen konnte, und stellt die Bulgarin als Bindeglied zwischen Udo und den ersten, sehr viel jüngeren Funden aus Ostafrika dar.
Auch Klima wird erwähnt. Die große Abkühlung, die vor 15mio losging, hat Bulgarien vor ca 6mio Jahren regelrecht verwüstet und so migrierten Säugetiere, auch diese Oberschenkel... ^^, nach Süden, nach Afrika.
Meine Ergänzung:
in Schwaben war es da schon nicht mehr warm genug. Udo hatte vor 11mio Jahren zwar noch in Afrikanischer Pflanzenwelt gelebt, aber vor 6mio Jahren war es in Schwaben lokal halt schon ca. 20Grad kälter und auch die Alpen wölbten sich nach oben, was den Einfluss vom tropischem Mittelmeer/Afrika senkte.
hach.
Jetzt hätt ich gern noch die Einordnung, dass Afrika von 11 bis 7mio Jahre sowieso viel zu heiß gewesen ist, um große Säugetiere und aufrechtgehende Oberschenkel ^^ einen Lebensraum zu bieten.
Und dass nämlich darum die Wiege der Menschheit gerade nicht in Süd oder Ostafrika stand, sondern in Schwaben!!
https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2026/03/04/stammt-der-aelteste-vorfahr-des-menschen-vom-balkan-ein-neues-fossil-schliesst-eine-luecke
🦋🐜 Researchers found that Alcon blue #caterpillars can mimic the specific acoustic pulses of a queen ant.
By sounding like royalty, they convince worker #ants to carry them home and protect them from predators.
#research #biology #nature #butterflies #science #evolution #wildlife #insects
Rare Fossils in Amber Raise Questions About Secret Lives of Cretaceous Insects
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/rare-fossils-in-amber-reveal-the-secret-lives-of-cretaceous-insects/
Liebe #evolution!
Hören und Sehen und diese ganzen anderen Sinne sind ja wirklich ganz toll und machen ja auch irgendwie Sinn.
Aber ich brauche ganz dringend Abstandswarner an Zehen, Kniescheiben und Ellenbogen!
Wäre mir ein Fest, wenn du dich drum kümmern könntest.
Bussi! ❤️
🧬👁️ In an evolutionary plot twist, new #research shows that #humans and other #vertebrates share an ancestor that actually lost its paired eyes before evolving them all over again.
👉 https://phys.org/news/2026-02-oneeyed-creature-gave-modern-eyes.html
#evolution #biology #science #eyes #history #nature #genetics #discovery
This week's #NewBooks at the library:
- For my birthday back in December, I treated myself to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from The Folio Society.
- A review copy of Simon Lamb's The Oldest Rocks on Earth: A Search for the Origins of Our World from Columbia University Press (a review is forthcoming).
- A second-hand copy of Peter Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection from Oxford University Press. This one was withdrawn from the holdings of the nearby Devon Libraries, but has found a welcome home with me.
#Books #Scicomm #Geology #EarthSciences #Evolution #EvolutionaryBiology #Bookstodon @bookstodon
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A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.
On the left, standing up, Frankenstein, showing a black silhouette of a humanoid figure in shredded clothing against what would be white rocks. The book is bound in blue cloth and is standing in front of a blue marbled slipcase.
In the middle, lying down, The Oldest Rocks on Earth, a paperback showing a colour photo of a mountainous landscape (to be specific, a view of the Makhonjwa Mountains in northwest Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Africa.
On the right, standing up, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, a hardback showing drawings of ammonites on a pale pink background, with a white-bordered square with an ammonite drawing on a pale orange background in the centre.
Dinosaur eggshells can reveal the age of other fossils
Like rocks, egg shells can trap isotopes, allowing us to use them to date samples.
Archive: ia: https://s.faithcollapsing.com/ttykm
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/dinosaur-eggshells-can-reveal-the-age-of-other-fossils/#biology #dinosaurs #evolution #paleontology #radioactive-dating #science
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Image of a brownish rock with lots of cracked oval shapes embedded in it.
Ja, diesen Vorzug von Freiheit habe ich auch bei anderen Themen wie Evolution gespürt: Weil für mich Religion eine freiwillige Ergänzung zur Wissenschaft war, hatte ich lange das zwanghafte Ringen von traditionell geprägten dazu nicht verstanden. Auch in Ländern wie dem #Iran zerstört fehlende #Religionsfreiheit auch den Glauben. Deswegen finde auch ich sie unverzichtbar, auch gegenüber unseren eigenen Kindern. #Religion #Evolution #Tradition
Danke, @Zugfreundin - ich verstehe die Skepsis, die uns v.a. auch anfangs entgegenschlug.
Aber nach bald 30 Jahren glücklicher #Ehe und drei wunderbaren, gemeinsamen Kindern glauben wir eigentlich nicht mehr, dass wir noch irgendwem etwas beweisen müssten. Ob Sie alle oder einige Religionen sowie Familienformen, Dialog und Zusammenleben emotional ablehnen wollen, kann und will ich nicht bestimmen. Und über die Langstrecke ist es dann ja eh biokulturelle #Evolution ! 🙂🙌 https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/homo-religiosus/982255
🤔🦴 #Humans are the only #primates with chins, yet they don't seem to serve any purpose. New #research suggests our chins are "evolutionary spandrels" – incidental byproducts of our ancestors developing larger heads and smaller teeth.
#evolution #anthropology #science #biology #nature #stem #history
🐜🌊 Researchers at #GeorgiaTech have looked into how fire #ants interlock their legs and jaws to form buoyant, waterproof rafts that can float for weeks. These "living arks" use tiny air bubbles trapped against their bodies to stay 75% less dense than water.
👉 https://www.discoverwildlife.com/wildlife/insects-invertebrates/fire-ant-raft
#wildlife #nature #science #biology #engineering #biomimicry #insects #evolution
Evolution of problem-solving throughout the ages! #StoneAge to #ComputerAge
#History #Evolution #Cartoon #Humor #Technology #ProblemSolving #ComicStrip #Throwback #TechHumor
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This image is a cartoon depicting various historical ages through a common theme: a person using a hammer to hit an object characteristic of each age.
Stone Age: A person from the Stone Age hits a rock with a stone hammer, creating a spark and the sound "BANG!".
Bronze Age: A person hits a bronze ingot with a bronze hammer, producing the sound "BANG!".
Iron Age: A person hits an iron bar with an iron hammer, creating a spark and the sound "BANG!".
Dark Age: A medieval knight hits a shield with a mace, producing the sound "BANG!".
Modern Age: A modern person hits a nail with a hammer, producing the sound "BANG!".
Computer Age: A person hits a computer with a hammer, producing the sound "BANG!".
Each scene is accompanied by the sound "BANG!" to emphasize the impact.
Spread the word! This is copy of a comment from latest GutsickGibbon livestream on YouTube.
If you’ve ever wanted to flush the “If we come from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” argument down the evolutionary toilet once and for all, this is for you.
July 2nd is International Why Do British People Exist? Day
That’s right. We’re turning one of creationism’s most brainless gotchas into a full-blown satire holiday.
The basic idea:
“If white Americans came from British people, why are there still British people?”
It’s not just a joke (though it is a pretty good joke). it’s a meme-powered push to retire this specific brand of anti-intellectual nonsense from public discourse.
What You Can Do:
* Post your own version on July 2nd to any social media platform, including YouTube
* Optional, use the hashtag #WhyDoBritishPeopleExistDay
* Bonus points for memes, screen caps, videos, or just sarcastic deadpan
We’re not mocking belief, we’re mocking lazy logic. If you’ve ever yelled “That’s not how evolution works!” at your screen, this is your day.
Let’s push this incoherent argument off the public stage, loudly, proudly, and PERMANENTLY.
#WhyDoBritishPeopleExistDay
#July2nd
Example: Today July 2nd, is INTERNATIONAL WHY DO BRITISH PEOPLE EXIST DAY. And on this day I am here to remind you that the "why do monkeys still exist" argument is dumb.
If Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and British People all come from 17th century British People, then why are there still British people?
Evolution gave us thumbs. Let’s use them to type better arguments!
#WhyDoBritishPeopleExistDay
#July2nd
Apes Show Ability to Imagine in ‘Tea Party’ Experiments, and Scientists are Very Excited
Why Males Exist by Fred Hapgood, 1979
An Inquiry Into the Evolution of Sex
A provocative examination of why the male gender exists at all shapes up as something of an antidote to the more macho sexual tracts that have been appearing in the wake of sociobiology. (E.g., Wallace, below.) The Atlantic Monthly science columnist goes so far as to say that "males have been devised by females to aid them in their competition with other females."
#books
#nonfiction
#gender
#males
#sex
#evolution
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His thesis is based on an examination of life from simple bacteria to monogamous mammals. Bacteria are essentially asocial and asexual, resorting to a form of mating with some gene exchange under certain environmental conditions. Bisexuality occurs at a second, more advanced, level of organism complexity, where there is some gain from the greater variety that gene-mixing confers. Full-fledged male and female genders are common at a third stage of evolution when social competition and a sufficiently stable environment provide opportunities for optimal gene exchanges. At this point Hapgood sees male sexuality evolving to ""serve"" what is essentially the female ""manufacturing"" role. Males compete and females select. Only at a fourth stage do male and female roles evolve to the point where lengthy pair bonds and even monogamous matings occur, with the male investing much time and effort in providing and protecting the female and even sharing in parenting. On the surface the thesis has a more benign cast than the ""sex-for-the-selfish-gene's sake"" theories prevalent. But the theories are really akin. They share the common sociobiological belief in the grand logic of nature, holding that much of human behavior is reducible to a ""reproductive imperative,"" or the equivalent--all of which is obvious.
Dolphins were once coastal wolves.
They left the sea, then went back in.
It looks like the cycle if coastal predator <> sea predator is a common enough feature of #evolution
shitpost, llm, thunderbird [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
We all knew it was inevitable, but I'm still sad to read that @thunderbird is adding AI to their email client.
I've been having issues with thunderbird lately, where it would time out sending mail even though evolution and kmail work fine. I was going to engage with their bug tracker to see if it could be resolved, but now I'm not going to bother. I'm also stopping my donations to the project.
They claim it will be 'opt in', but we all know what that means: constant banners and nagging popups begging you to please try their phenomenal AI features. No thanks, I'm getting out.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
I've been test-driving #Evolution and #KMail. Out of the two, Evolution speaks the most to me, so I think that's going to be my email client starting today.
Too bad neither Evolution nor KMail support usenet. I'll have to look for something else for that.
🦑🔦 To us, this #cuttlefish looks plain. But to another cuttlefish, it’s putting on a flashy show for a potential mate.
Scientists found these #cephalopods use their arms to literally twist light waves, creating high-contrast patterns that are invisible to the human eye.
👉 https://www.sciencealert.com/cuttlefish-literally-twist-light-to-attract-a-mate-study-finds
#biology #physics #marinebiology #science #evolution #nature #ocean #stem #education #wildlife #fish
1. Economists from the physiocrats (18th century) onward promised society freedom from material deprivation and hard physical labor in exchange for submitting to an economic arrangement of society
2. In a country like the US, material deprivation and hard physical labor have been significantly reduced since then:
- Though too many clearly still suffer too much, a large proportion of people live free from fear of starvation or lack of shelter
- The US has deindustralized, meaning hard physical labor is not the reality for a lot of people. For a lot of people labor is emotional or symbolic (“knowledge work”)
- In other words, for lots of people the economic promise has been fulfilled
- It is not coincidental that “Gas Town”’s announcement post mentioned Towers of Hanoi, an undergraduate CS student homework problem that for most students requires thinking hard. It’s designed to encourage a kind of “eureka” moment where recursion as a computer programming technique becomes more clear. GT claims to fulfill the promise of not having to think hard like this anymore: the LLMs will do that thinking for you
- It is not coincidental that Gas Town is described as being very expensive. Economic power in the form of asset accumulation is what earns you freedom in this way of conceiving things. If you want the freedom from having to think hard, you’d better accumulate assets
- Since the promise is greater collective freedom, endeavoring to accumulate assets is, in this view, a collective good
- This differs from effective altruism and other “do good by doing well” conceptions. Rather, the very mechanism of economics produces collective wealth, so the story goes, which means the more active one is as an economic agent, the more collective good one produces (“wealth” and “good” being conflated)
- Accumulation of assets is the scorecard, so to speak, of such enhanced economic activity, and the individual reward can then be freedom from having to think hard
- Lotka’s maximum power principle (supposedly) dictates that those entities that transform the most power into useful organization are most fit from an evolutionary standpoint
- Ernst Juenger’s notion of “total mobilization” brings this principle to politics/political economy/geopolitics: those nations that “totally” mobilize their national resources are the ones that will dominate geopolitically
- See, for instance, the RAND Corporation’s Commission on the National Defense Strategy: “The Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat. It needs to do a better job of incorporating new technology at scale; field more and higher-capability platforms, software, and munitions; and deploy innovative operational concepts to employ them together better.” (emphasis mine). In summary: the US is about to be outcompeted (lacks fitness); in response, it should go big (“at scale”, “more”) in an organized way (“deploy innovative operational concepts”, “employ them together better”)
- The rhetoric around LLM-based AI includes similar language, exemplified in the GT post: burn through as much infrastructural resources as possible to produce organized outputs “at scale”, while avoiding having human beings think too hard to produce those outputs, an indication that the power was burned to produce useful organization
- LLM-based AI plays a prominent role in US federal government strategy, particularly military strategy, with language about dominance serving to justify its use
- It is not coincidental that Gas Town uses many orders of magnitude more resources to solve the Towers of Hanoi problem (“Burn All The Gas” Town). This rhetoric dovetails perfectly with the “total mobilization” concept
🦝🧠 Researchers have found that #raccoons pack a primate-like number of neurons into their small brains, including specialized cells once thought to be exclusive to #humans and great #apes.
This "neural density" helps explain their ability to solve complex puzzles and remember solutions for years, often outperforming #dogs and #cats.
👉 https://www.good.is/raccoon-science
#biology #wildlife #neuroscience #nature #evolution #science #behavior #stem
Mich stört am #Antitheismus eigentlich nur die Lautstärke & #Arroganz auch gegenüber der #Wissenschaft.
Wer gemeinschaftlich & auch ehrenamtlich aktive Familien mit Kindern als „Schema F“ verhöhnt, hat halt auch #Demografie & biokulturelle #Evolution nicht verstanden.
Wie gesagt: Gerne verebben, aber bitte nicht inhaltlich langweilen. Danke.🙏
@obucate @HansZauner @stiebke @lordkhan https://scilogs.spektrum.de/natur-des-glaubens/die-empirische-beweislast-der-antitheisten/
Oh wow! Amazing.
"A fossil of Prototaxites... is set to go on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
This enigmatic organism, which grew to more than eight metres tall, belonged to an "entirely extinct evolutionary branch of life", scientists believe. Initially thought to be a fungus, experts now suggest Prototaxites, which vanished approximately 360 million years ago, was neither plant nor fungus."
#Scotland #evolution #biology
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/prototaxites-scotland-fossil-fungus-life-b2905336.html
Saw a meme a few weeks ago about skipping forward to the moment he shoots himself in the bunker.
But hasn't history revealed that there were a number of plots to end him early in his rise to power and after he became Das Fürher?
Could we skip the bloody killing, atrocities, carnage, mayhem and destruction this go 'round?
But no, greedy bros got to sqeeze every last ruble and every drop of oil poison
#war #warmongers #evil #supremists #whitepowerideology #orangeshitler
#evolution
Today in Labor History January 19, 1920: Crystal Eastman, Roger Nash Baldwin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (from the IWW) and others founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Their original focus was freedom of speech, primarily anti-war speech, and supporting conscientious objectors. In 1923, they defended author Upton Sinclair after he was arrested for trying to read the First Amendment during an IWW rally. In 1925, they persuaded John T. Scopes to defy Tennessee's anti-evolution law in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Clarence Darrow, an ACLU member, headed Scopes' legal team. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. In 1926, they defended H. L. Mencken, who deliberately broke Boston law by distributing copies of his banned American Mercury magazine and won their first major acquittal. However, they kicked Elizabeth Gurley Flynn off their board in 1940 because of her Communist affiliations. And they refused defend Paul Robeson and other leftists in the 1950s.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #IWW #union #elizabethgurleyflynn #communism #aclu #evolution #uptonsinclair #PaulRobeson #clarencedarrow #hlmencken #freespeech #antiwar #education #school #freeppress #journalism #firstamendment @bookstadon
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Black and white portrait of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a white blouse, scarf and dark skirt, pointing a finger emphatically in what looks like a pause during a speech. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=456361
The reason I find this so exciting is that I like to think about evolution as strategic.
It's a common misconception that evolution happens just by chance. Randomness is a critical component, yes, but life doesn't simply hope for luck. Life does everything it can to shift the balance in life's favor.
But how? Obviously, most organisms don't know that they're evolving. They don't know they have genes, let alone which ones to mutate in order to grow longer fur. So, in some sense, evolution is a "blind" process.
But, in another sense, it's not. Organisms have a fair amount of influence over their development, and their children. They can anticipate and detect change, and remember "contingency plans" in their genes.
I think it's important to understand how life shapes its own evolution, given the very limited information and control that it has. Life has managed to do a lot with that!
I love how the researchers explored this with a computational model.
They made a simple simulation, where each individual decides how much "insulation" to grow, using the strategies above to match the current temperature. The experimenters ran simulations over a wide range of settings, with environments that change fast or slow, predictably or unpredictably. They simulated evolution in each environment, producing a map of which strategy works best across a wide range of conditions.
But then they looked at what happens when environmental dynamics change. That is, when weather becomes less predictable, or changes more rapidly, how do you respond? This allowed them to map out when the simulated organisms were able to switch strategies and survive, and when they were driven to extinction because they were stuck on the wrong strategy.
I love that they could do this, and it seems like a really useful way of thinking through the effects of climate change and how to help species cope.
What's cool is that all of these strategies make sense, but which is best depends on how the environment is changing.
If it changes predictably, then you ought to prepare multiple responses and choose between them. Like, if it's cold every winter, and you only live a few months, you ought to have more insulation if you're born in the fall than if you're born in the spring. If you live many years, then maybe it's worth having fur that you grow and shed seasonally.
On the other hand, if the change is unpredictable, bet hedging is the way to go. If you can guess the right strategy, then the whole population ought to do that. If you can't guess reliably, though, then just split the difference, and hopefully enough of you will do well enough to survive.
If the environment changes very slowly, then you can ignore all this. If you're in an ice age, just have long fur. When it ends in a few thousand years, you can evolve short fur again, no problem.
I enjoyed this paper on evolutionary dynamics.
The key idea here is that in a changing environment, a population must evolve to survive, and there are different strategies for doing that. The two main ones are "bet hedging" and "plasticity."
In bet hedging, you don't know which traits your offspring will need, so you try to strike a balance. Either you pick traits that are probably good enough under any circumstances (but maybe not the best), or you produce diverse offspring, so hopefully at least some of them will have the right traits to thrive!
With plasticity, you don't actually decide what traits you want until after you see the environmental conditions. Maybe you check the temperature when you're born, and grow more or less fur accordingly. Maybe you do this once, or continually throughout your life. Either way, it's more costly to each individual than bet hedging, since you need to change your body.
I hate it when folks dismiss simpler forms of life as "unintelligent." Yes, animals are very smart, but it's a mistake to think intelligence began with us! It's not about having big brains. If we want to understand what intelligence is and where it came from, we have to consider much simpler forms of intelligence, and the complex interactions between cognition and evolution.
https://thinkingwithnate.wordpress.com/2026/01/07/evolution-and-cognition/
Italian brown bears have evolved to become less aggressive, move out of Mama's house
🌳 One tree becomes a forest. A banyan expands by aerial prop roots that descend from branches, touch earth, and thicken into secondary trunks, letting one living individual spread outward like an entire grove. Inside each fig, a tiny pollinator wasp keeps the cycle going.
✍️ Explore the science of spreading permanence: https://TPC8.short.gy/HCHv2a6A
🌱 One becomes many yet remains one.
#Banyan #Trees #Ecology #Evolution #Botany #Nature #Pollination #Biodiversity #Culture #TPC8
Ja, wie schon #Darwin selbst zu Recht vermutete, verhält sich #Religiosität nicht grundsätzlich anders als #Musikalität oder #Spiritualität. Unsere #Gehirne sind schlicht Ergebnisse der #Evolution.
Und mit der #Evolutionstheorie tun sich viele schwer, ich weiß…
Hier meine erste große Titelgeschichte dazu, #Homoreligiosus 2009:
@KaiSa https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/homo-religiosus/982255
New review: The Desert Bones brings to life North Africa during the Mid-Cretaceous through a meticulous and exhaustive overview of the often fragmentary fossils that have been found in this region.
#Books #BookReview #Bookstodon #Dinosaurs #Fossils #Evolution #Paleontology #Palaeontology #Scicomm @bookstodon
Danke, @heinerme - diese Beobachtungen kann ich voll unterstützen!
Gleichzeitig ist gerade auch #Mastodon sehr links, rationalistisch & oft #religionsfeindlich geprägt - und ich weiß echt nicht, ob ich mir weitere Hundert Mal die gleichen #Vorurteile gegen alle #Religionen antun will.
Hatte schon 2014 (!) eine m.E. gelungene Sendung von #QuarksundCo zur #Evolution der #Religion , habe jetzt auch noch 1 #Schaubild zum #Extremismus gemacht. Für 2026 überlege ich noch... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy9J9ddelVw
Witness 650- ft #megatsunami in #Greenland
https://www.earth.com/news/650-foot-mega-tsunami-dickson-fjord-greenland-global-seismic-waves-swot-sentinel-2/#google_vignette
My take on #earthquakes, #climatechange etc here
https://nkozphoto.com/index.php/2025/11/05/earthquakes-evolution-and-darwins-exploits-in-chile/ #darwin #evolution #science #climate #chile
We need theories like this to stand up against the default story of evolution today, which is called the Modern Synthesis.
The problem with the old theory is it treats organisms as these passive objects that get molded by natural selection, as if that were an external force that acts on a population. Or, more precisely, it molds their genes, and the genes, supposedly, are all we need to understand the extraordinarily complex forms and behaviors of organisms.
But this is absurd. Organisms live or die by what they do, and every single cell will fight like hell to stay alive. New evidence makes it clear, genes are not mere "programming" for organisms, unless, of course, we mean that organisms are "programming" themselves!
The struggle to survive is what brings novelty and fit to evolution. It's about making good of what you're given, and adapting to whatever life throws your way, not perfectly replicating your genes.
I recently read Organisms, Agency, and Evolution by Professor Denis Walsh, which was a great book for me.
It's a philosophy of evolution that centers the role of organisms struggling to survive, and how that shapes their evolution. I'm trying to research exactly this topic! Walsh presents his ideas as a lens for biology research, while I'm trying to use them as inspiration for computer science research. And, perhaps, to see what computer science can lend to this biology debate.
This book is extremely useful for me, since it lays out a simple, elegant schema for many the points I want to make. It also collects a huge array of references, evidence and opinions for and against this perspective.
It gave me a couple of ideas I'm itching to try out in my simulations. :)
Who is your de-evolved spirit animal?
#startrek #genetics #spirtanimal #tv #evolution
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Genesis_(episode)
| Amphibian Troi: | 0 |
| Australopithecine Riker: | 0 |
| Arachnid Barclay: | 0 |
| Proto Worf: | 0 |
| Lemur Picard: | 0 |
Herzlichen Dank für das Interesse & Teilen, @d_zwoelfer 🙏🙌
Ich entdeckte die unglaubliche Geschichte der außergewöhnlichen #ABB , als ich zur Rolle der #Frauen in der #Evolution und für eine Biografie zu Charles #Darwin recherchierte. Seitdem kämpfe ich darum, dass sie endlich wieder als die Heldin erinnert wird, die sie war. Sowohl #Kirche wie #Wissenschaft könnten viel weiter sein, wenn Frauen wie sie erinnert & geehrt würden!
Daher bedeutet mir Deine Ermutigung viel! https://scilogs.spektrum.de/natur-des-glaubens/antoinette-brown-blackwell-als-starke-frau-entdeckt/
Why do we have five fingered hands and five toed feet? Because we are basically a fish
Via SSS
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The classic ape to man sketch with Trump in the middle wlking in the opposite direction.
Zur #Evolution des #Gabentausch:
#Pinguine überreichen ihren Partnern #Kieselsteine, Schimpansen teilen gelegentlich #Nahrung. Solche Gesten sind immer wieder Gegenstand neuer wissenschaftlicher Forschung.
Klar ist: Sie zeigen, wie tief Austauschhandlungen in der Natur verankert sind. Wenn #Tiere Objekte weitergeben, stärkt das Bindungen, fördert #Kooperation und erfüllt oft dieselbe Rolle wie menschliche Gaben: #Beziehungen lebendig zu halten. https://www.tagesschau.de/wissen/gesundheit/psychologie-schenken-glueck-kulturgeschichte-rituale-100.html
The thing I find really weird about the anti-#evolution folks is that they are loudly upset about us being evolved from apes but strangely silent about us being evolved from amoebas.
Modern Cats Were Domesticated Only 2,000 Years Ago
"Ancient DNA reveals the origin and global spread of the domestic cat out of its ancestral home in Africa."
#cats #wildcats #evolution #domestication #AncientDNA #genomics https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2025/12/16/modern-cats-were-domesticated-only-2000-years-ago/
It's name is LUCA and it's the ancester of every living thing on Earth and lived 4.2 Billion years ago 🙂
Apparently Giles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri were influenced by this book and Butler's other writings on machine life. The Butlerian Jihad of Dune is possibly named after him (so far haven't found a definitive statement of this, though a very similar event happens in Erewhon). Even Alan Turing references it. Butler, in turn, was heavily influenced by Darwin's On the Origin of Species. So there is a fascinating confluence around this book.
Without spoiling it, does anyone have thoughts about Erewhon?
#Erewhon #Butler #fiction #SciFi #ScienceFiction #evolution #MachineIntelligence #AI #ArtificialLife #ComputerScience #EvolutionaryBiology
Herzlichen Dank, @silberspur - ich freue mich schon sehr auf gute #Dialoge zur #Evolution der #Mimesis! ☺️📚🙌
Denn wenn #Blumenberg doch erkannt hat: „Enge der #Zeit ist die Wurzel des Bösen.“, dann kann uns „Weite der Zeit“ jenseits der mimetischen #Blasen auch im #Fediversum ja nur gut tun! 🤓🙏💡
Bin wirklich gespannt auf Deine Beiträge! 🫶🏻👍
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Zwei Gruppen von Comic-Personen haben sich via Smartphone in voneinander abgeschottete, mimetische Blasen zurückgezogen.
BroderickRodell: "Our #past has so much to teach us...we don't need to romanticize or denigrate it. We need to embrace what can serve us in our #evolution & relinquish that which stagnates us. We need a story that recognizes our #collectiveinterest in #workingtogether.
#OrderOfTheSacredEarth https://bit.ly/4hkaVA6
A dead whale shows up on your beach. What do you do with the 40-ton carcass? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/10/whale-ecosystem-death-anchorage-alaska #Environment #Marinelife #Cetaceans #Evolution #Wildlife #Animals #Biology #Science #Whales #Alaska #USnews
How will humans #evolve into the future? How might humans evolve if our civilization was lost and the climate was unforgiving for millions of years? Or if two populations of humans were geographically isolated for that long? For this years #FediBookFair #FediHumans can get a free copy of HUMAN. Visit https://bretthodnett.com/FreeHUMAN.html and use the code ‘fedihuman’ to get your free EPUB!
https://bretthodnett.com/HUMAN.html
#Climate #ClimateChange #Future #Evolution #HumanEvolution #WhatToRead #Readers #ScienceFiction #SciFi #Science #Biology #Bookstodon #BookLaunch #Fediverse #Books #Livres #Fiction #EPUB #Ebook #FreeBook #FreeBooks #GiveAway #SFF
I also appreciate them taking an algorithmic perspective. That's unfortunately rare in biology! But they could have done more with that.
The cool thing about splicing is it creates a systematic way of searching for new proteins by playing around with existing ones. It's about creating a new search space bounded by what has worked in the past, searching over variations on those themes to refine them and find new practical applications for them.
Eukaryotes also invented new mechanisms for addressing and managing genes. This made it possible to search over systems of protein interactions in new ways. This must have been really useful for discovering new cellular lifestyles, which turned out to also be important for giving each cell a different job in a multicellular organism.
But they didn't speculate about any of that. Mostly, they just talk about gene and protein lengths, how that looks like a phase transition, and how you sometimes see that in algorithms.
I enjoyed this paper that characterizes eukaryotes as a sort of "phase transition" in the evolutionary algorithm of life. It's a cool idea that I find very appealing, though I have a few nits to pick with this paper.
For one, why do we always have to see eukaryotes as "the origin of multicellular life"? I mean, yeah, that's super interesting and important. But eukaryotes started off as single cells, and most of them are still unicellular to this day! Evolution didn't invent novel gene regulatory mechanisms in order to make animals. They must have been important in the lives of these single cells, first! So shouldn't we be looking there for answers? There's nothing wrong with asking how that led to multicellular organisms, but I think we need to understand the perspective from those first cells that found it useful to be more complex.
re: intense Gnome frustrations no one should be forced to read [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
and so, once again, the 'solution' isn't in the distro or legacy, it is in the wiki on the internals of Evolution where I just incidentally learn it can be a flatpak or not, and thus there are TWO .local/share folders to wipe. So I delete all accts in Evo, empty trash just in case, exit, wipe those folders, go into Settings, delete the Google connection which shows as two identical so delete them both, reboot.
On boot, go straight to settings which shows none, add Google and I'm in, quick as a wink. I start #Evolution, and lo, there it is, my account fetching emails!
Now to figure that #mastodonel thing and why mastodon.plstore is so problematic.
The trash panda is being domesticated
What?
Urban #raccoons have shorter snout length than rural raccoons
This is due to #neoteny: the retention of juvenile characteristics in adulthood
An aggressive adult #raccoon won't live long near us. So their genes aren't passed on. But the more docile and childlike breed more successfully in cities
Dogs are basically wolf puppies after all
Give it a millennia or two and we'll have raccoons on our sofas
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-city-raccoons-domestication.html
re: intense Gnome frustrations no one should be forced to read [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
Found an obscure hint that perhaps instead of authenticating through #Evolution I should instead authenticate through the #Gnome settings for attached accounts, so I tried that approach, this time it asks for far more permissions (8 in all) but, you guessed it, a classic Sam Beckett "No Answer" and the terse response, "timed out".
So the app doesn't matter. The browser doesn't matter. The account or any legacy cruft doesn't matter.
Does this leave as the only explanation that perhaps Google no longer provides OAuth2 tokens? Surely that would be all over the news if true, but I'm running out of local culprits. Also Emacs inability to authenticate Mastodon suggests its neither google nor Debian per se? Maybe I should spend my time more productively slamming a car door on my fingers?
I have a dread feeling wiping the laptop and carefully reinstalling from scratch will not work.
intense Gnome frustrations no one should be forced to read [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
Created a fresh account, logged in, immediately launched #Evolution and entered the Google account, and I get the exact same behaviour?!
Is it possible Google changed the rules midnight Nov 29th? Or is the #FUBAR thing deep deep in the bowels of #debian13?
intense Gnome frustrations no one should be forced to read [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
so
very
frustrating
#Gnome #Evolution how is this even possible? Fresh #Debian13 install, launched, added my google workspace, read and answered email, browsed calendar, really nice, but the VERY NEXT MORNING suddenly tossed into OAuth2-is-missing, step through the 'wizard' and it always ends with the same heartache, are you trying sign in? and then…
Mail authentication (shown) gives a URL to a page, Make sure you trust Gnome (4 perms already granted, Google console agrees) but in Firefox that URL asks to confirm and then reverts to google.com. In the minibrowser, it gets to "Requesting access token, please wait"
And wait you do.
How is this even POSSIBLE? What could cause it to (a) drop an OAuth2 overnight that had been in use for a day and (b) subsequently give a URL that does not result in an access token. I removed permissions on the Google side, but same results. Reinstalled Evolution, no change
yes, I checked gitlab.gnome.org
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Google Mail authentication request offers a URL; whether through the embedded mini-browser or given to Firefox-ESR, the link asks to verify the 4 already granted permissions, and then can only say "Requesting access token, please wait…"
The universe with end before any token arrives.
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Result from confirming permissions in the mini-browser. Notice the very strange URL; Open in Browser will just resend the permission confirm request and then bounce to google.com
and it was going so well too: spent yesterday enjoying a not-gmail #Evolution access to my workspace, but now, as of this morning, with no changes other than sleep, Evolution is locked out:
“Failed to authenticate: Cannot create an item in a locked collection”.
ok #Debian13 #gnome wtf is a "locked collection" and by who's authority was it created with a lock on my own machine?
More to the point: will my Evolution email always be this fragile? ie is it pointless to even try?
More to the gripe: do software developers EVER post messages using terms that are actually DEFINED somewhere?
How Do Periodical Cicadas Know When To Emerge?
"How do 17-year cicadas, which live underground as nymphs, track the passage of time so they all emerge synchronously as adults?"
#evolution #LifeHistory #PeriodicalCicadas #entomology #ecology https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2025/11/30/how-do-periodical-cicadas-know-when-to-emerge/
Examining why some species developed consciousness while others remained non-conscious
What is the evolutionary advantage of our consciousness? And what can we learn about this from observing birds? Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum published two articles on this topic.
#consciousness #birds #evolution
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-species-consciousness-conscious.html
From #Mastodon this time last year.
#Thanksgiving #Holidays #Evolution #Science #Dinosaurs #Humor #Satire
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[A cartoon family sits at a table around a roast turkey, heads bowed & eyes closed, as if in prayer.]
AND WE WISH TO THANK EVOLUTION
FOR SLOWLY TURNING SOME SPECIES
OF DINOSAUR INTO A WALKING BALL
OF MEAT WITH A TINY HEAD.
🦖🍽️ The #asteroid that killed #dinosaurs 66 million years ago transformed #Earth's #forests from open canopy to dense #rainforests, creating new ecological niches where many of today's #food crops first evolved.
Field Museum paleobotanist Mike Donovan explains how green beans, yams, #coffee, cacao, and other #Thanksgiving staples only began developing after dinosaurs disappeared, making these foundational foods a direct consequence of the mass extinction event.
👉 https://www.popsci.com/science/thanksgiving-dinner-dinosaurs/
My #introduction needs a refresh.
I'm a #PhD student at the University of #Vermont, studying the #Evolution of #Evolvability. I'm into #AI, #ALife, #Biology, and #Philosophy, because I want to understand #life, #adaptation, and #intelligence using my native language of #ComputerScience. I share my musings and #research on my #blog. I love #science generally, and am full of bitchy #AcademicChatter.
I was a #SoftwareEngineer in #SiliconValley for many years, but left in 2021. I'm glad I did, and now I feel a bit betrayed by the #TechIndustry. I've been going back to my #FOSS roots, and gradually #DeGoogle ing my life. I still love to talk about #code #craft, #UX, and healthy #engineering #culture. Recently I've been enjoying #gpu #programming, mostly in #taichilang.
I have a wife and a #cat. I love #nature, #photography, #cooking, and #yoga.
All kinds of people are valid and worthy, but #trans people, folks on the #autism spectrum, and #bipoc get a shout out right now because they need our support.
(16 Nov) The evolution of rationality: How chimps process conflicting evidence
Chimps can take in new evidence, evaluate its strength, and change their minds.
https://s.faithcollapsing.com/l0188
#behavioral-science #beliefs #biology #chimps #evolution #science
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A lush green background, with a chimp in the foreground contemplating its own hand as it gestures enigmatically.