Seriously Random

avatar kyoshi:

Excited about the #CountdownToMars? We’ve got you covered.

We’ve created a virtual Mars photo booth, 3D rover experience and more for you to put your own creative touch on wishing Perseverance well for her launch to the Red Planet! Check it out, HERE. 

Don’t forget to mark the July 30 launch date on your calendars! 

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.

“So today my character decided he is tired of my shit and walked away.”

We would have survived a McCain Presidency

We would have survived a Romney Presidency

I honestly worry that there are some people who would not survive a Trump Presidency

I don’t care how much you love Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. On November 8, 2016, one of two things will be true: either Hillary Clinton will be elected President, or Donald Trump will be elected President.

Which one, HONESTLY, would be worse?

This isn’t the year to “vote your conscience.”

There’s a fucking dangerous man one election away from being President.

This is the year to vote to survive.

Any other year, this would be an exaggeration. We survived Bush, we could have survived McCain or Romney. This year, Trump’s danger is no exaggeration.

The communities of middle eastern descent will not survive.

Women, especially women who want a right to choose, will not survive.

The black community will not survive.

The latino community will not survive.

The disabled community will not survive.

I guarantee that there are more groups.

Now that it’s almost 2020, can you see that this wasn’t a fucking exaggeration

Do you understand now

This is going around again and now that we’re in the Democratic Primaries and y'all are already saying about how you’ll stay home if you’re favorite doesn’t win I’d just like to remind y'all that people are dying in the Trump administration

People are dying in concentration camps at the border

Trump rolled back Obamacare and now millions more people are without insurance

Trump is rolling back environmental regulations and climate change and pollution will kill us

States are banning abortion which will affect millions of poor women and women of color and SCOTUS night overturn Roe v Wade

Hate crimes against Jews and people of color and LGBT people are going up

There are Nazis in the White House and marching in the streets

And Trump has given tax cuts to billionaires and appointed judges that will take away your constitutional rights

Are you happy with your choice to vote third party? To stay home? Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it?

We’re facing the same choice again. We can’t have four more years of this.

Fight like hell for your candidate in the primaries. Then if and when they lose, get in line behind the winner.

We failed in 2016. The life and death stakes in 2020 are even higher.

Tens of thousands of people are dead y'all. Obama and Biden had an entire infrastructure, a system to deal with pandemics and Trump abolished the office and ignored reports of the virus for months

When the curve of infections increases exponentially, even acting one day earlier could have saved thousands of lives

And Trump ignored it for months

Unemployment is now higher than at any time since the great depression

I knew people would die but I never imagined that Trump would be responsible for this many deaths and the worst economic disaster in a century

We have to vote for Biden. I don’t like Biden. I wanted someone progressive. Someone who didn’t sexually assault someone. But this is literally life and death.

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