Pidgey Or Rattata: Catch Me Me: Go Choke

happy labor day to snoop doggs blunt roller specifically.

look i agree with the wider point here but can y’all stop recommending people NK Jemisin as a SFF author when she contributed to a the harassment campaign of a transfeminine author who ended up detransitioning because of the harassment.

Selected recurrent patterns or "laws" of evolution, of potential use for speculative biology. List compiled by Neocene's Pavel Volkov, who in turn credits its content to Nikolay Rejmers (original presumably in Russian). These are guidelines, and not necessarily scientifically rigorous.

Dollo's Law, or irreversibility of evolution: organisms do not evolve back into their own ancestors. When mammals returned to the sea, they did not develop gills and dermal scales and change back into fish: they became whales or seals or manatees, who retain mammalian traits and show marks of land-dwelling ancestry.

Roulliet's law, or increase of complexity: both organisms and ecosystems tend to become more complex over time, with subparts that are increasingly differentiated and integrated. This one is dodgier: there are many examples of simplification over time when it is selected for, for example in parasites. At least, over very large time scales, the maximum achievable complexity seems to increase.

Law of unlimited change: there is no point at which a species or system is complete and has finished evolving. Stasis only occurs when there is strong selective pressure in favor of it, and organism can always adapt to chaging conditions if they are not beyond the limits of survival.

Law of pre-adaptation or exaptation: new structures do not appear ex novo. When a new organ or behavior is developed, it is a modification or a re-purposing of something that already existed. Bone tissue probably evolved as reserves of energy before it was suitable to build an internal skeleton from, and feathers most likely evolved for thermal isolation and display before they were refined enough for flight.

Law of increasing variety: diversity at all levels tends to increase over time. While some forms originate from hybridization, most importantly the Eukaryotic cells, generally one ancestor species tends to leave many descendants, if it has any at all.

Law of Severtsov or of Eldredge-Gould or of punctuated equilibrium: while evolution is always slow from the human standpoint, there are moments of relatively rapid change and diversification when some especily fertile innovation appears (e.g. eyes and shells in the Cambrian), or new environments become inhabitable (e.g. continental surface in the Devonian), or disaster clears out space (e.g. at the end of the Permian or Cretaceous), followed by relative stability once all low-hanging fruit has been picked.

Law of environmental conformity: changes in the structure and functions of organisms follow the features or their environment, but the specifics of those changes depend on the structural and developmental constraints of the organisms. Squids and dolphins both have spindle-shaped bodies because physics make it necessary to move quickly through water, but water is broken by the anterior end of the skull in dolphins and by the posterior end of the mantle in squids. Superficial similarity is due to shared environment, deep structural similarity to shared ancestry.

Cope's and Marsh's laws: the most highly specialized members of a group (which often includes the physically largest) tend to go extinct first when conditions change. It is the generalist, least specialized members that usually survive and give rise to the next generations of specialists.

Deperet's law of increasing specialization: once a lineage has started to specialize for a particular niche, lifestyle, or resource, it will keep specializing in the same direction, as any deviation would be outcompeted by the rest. In contrast, their generalist ancestors can survive with a marginal presence in multiple niches.

Osborn's law, or adaptive radiation: as the previous takes place, different lines of descent from a common ancestor become increasingly different in form and specializations.

Shmalhausen's law, or increasing integration: over time, complex systems also tend to become increasingly integrated, with components (e.g. organs of an organism, or species in a symbiotic relationship) being increasingly indispensable to the whole, and increasingly tightly controlled.

I can't believe home depot literally produced a wildly successful science fiction musical and we all just pretend it didn't happen. on one hand yes it had a boring white guy main character but like.... home depot just... Made it? And it had shit ton of box office sales? and no one even talks about this. this is like avatar (2009) all over again

hii, i wanted to ask what you didn't like about ringworld, i was going to start reading it, but now i'm wondering if i should just not lol

I didn't like.. most of it, tbh.

It's very misogynistic and has a weirdly lukewarm/probably for the best :/ stance on eugenics, the characters are either complete cartoons, or truly awful people. The protagonist is just a vile person, but in that author self-insert way where he can only be validated, Teela is written like a precocious child and cocksleeve for the protagonist (and when she disapears, a new cocksleeve immediately replaces her.))

The aliens are also really stupidly written, the carnivores are warlike meatheads and the herbivores are pathetic and cowardly. The exploration of the ringworld isn't even fun because when they get there they mostly run past all of the inhabitants because they determine theyre just stupid savages and need to keep looking until they find civilized people, which was very jarring and frustrating after finishing several of Le Guin's Hainish books.

The scale of the ringworld is cool, and they way puppeteers look is cool. That's about it.

"Demo man is not a real man, he is only a man in spirit"

Concept: reverse exposition-bot NPC companion. They know fuck-all, and all of your dialogue options with them consist of the player character explaining stuff to them. The game's lore changes on the fly so that whatever you tell them retroactively becomes correct.

THIS IS THE WORK OF AN ENEMY STAND!

*pounds on ur windshield as u hide inside ur car with doors locked*

Today is the only day you can share this meme. Precisely 2000 years prior to March 6th 4017. The day Squidward trapped himself in the freezer. March 6th 2017.