Living Between Extremes

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

Not a biologist, but the evolution of mammals is way more granular than you might expect. Humans are the sole surviving species of the genus Homo, which was a real party before the other ones went extinct. You're in for a fun time.

Domestic cats are believed to be domesticated not from tigers, but from the African wildcat:

Which evolved to be small just because it's sometimes more useful to be small.

And no, hamsters are not off-brand rats. They're part of the rodent order, which includes beavers, moles, capybaras, guinea pigs (yes, also wild) and lots of other fun things:

it's all desperation. i do really believe ed zitron's rot economy idea, that the tech sector has been searching for a new internet or iphone or whatever that blows up and changes the world and they get to keep the profits so they'll uplift any garbage (hence nfts and the metaverse) to try and astroturf that. and relatedly, i think nvidia and the cloud compute companies and the ai companies are just passing the same dollar back and forth to create big numbers that paper over how bad the economy really is. it's all an attempt to keep the infinite growth hack going.