AFK BRB Chocolate (CA version)

  • 4 Posts
  • 158 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Unlike Reddit, Lemmy is small enough that you can browse by New/All and it’s a reasonable amount of time to scroll back through a day’s worth of posts. I do that now and then, and if I see a post in a community I like, I’ll subscribe to it.

    I originally figured I’d do that for a while, then I’d just browse by Subscribed, but I find what I mostly do is browse by Top of however long it’s been since I was last on. Like if it’s been around 24 hours, I’ll browse by Top Day.



  • Your friend was feeling attacked, and you walking away made her feel abandoned and unsupported. She just wants to know that you have her back. Yes, standing beside her to help show a united front would do that some.

    Usually to defuse a situation like that, I would try to understand what Karen was actually upset about, and let her know she’s being heard (which is, ultimately, what she probably wants), but also let her know she’s taking it out on someone who doesn’t deserve it. Saying “calm down” is just going to piss her off. Saying “Hey, I understand you’re upset, and I would be too, but the staff here has no ability to schedule your father for surgery when there aren’t any doctors, and you’re yelling at the wrong person” might.



  • This comes off like a person who has no empathy, or who assumes everyone else thinks like they do. When I was in college, I tutored math to middle school kids, and I can say with certainty that some people’s brains take to it more naturally than others. You can be very smart and still struggle with math.

    And putting that aside, “enjoyment” is inherently subjective. It’s like saying most people would enjoy liver and onions if they had it cooked right. No, some people will and some people won’t. It’s okay - people are a diverse lot and it’s fine if some people don’t like what you like.




  • I’m not a geneticist or anthropologist, but apparently that’s a debated, not proven mechanism. The theory being that natural selection works not just on individuals, but on societies. So if older members of a society are more inclined to help take care of the young, that society is more likely to survive, so that trait is more likely to get passed along and become more common in the population. That mechanism would only apply to social/pack animals (like humans), so wouldn’t apply to, say, turtles.

    But it’s hard to argue that ear hair in old men helps their society thrive. More likely, it’s just one more trait that is a result of aging and not selected for, like grey hair or wrinkles.


  • Natural selection works when you have a trait that makes you more successful at living long enough to pass along your genes or at attracting a mate to pass them along with. Your offspring are more likely to inherit that trait and so they’re more likely to pass along their genes as well, so the trait is more prevalent in the population. Conversely, if you have a trait that makes it harder for you to live, you’re less likely to pass along your genes, and so that trait is more likely to be less present in the population. If you have a trait that doesn’t impact your ability to live long enough to pass along your genes or attract a mate, it has no impact on natural selection.

    So if you have a trait that only appears after you’re past the baby making stage, it’s not playing into natural selection. By definition, that trait didn’t help you survive or attract a mate or whatever before having kids and passing it along. It just happens, like lots of other traits.









  • A “stok” or “stocc” was there lower part of a post or tree trunk in middle/old English. It became the name for any close-fitting garment that covered the foot and lower leg (stok of a person). So really it’s not that the name went from being one thing to being another, it’s that both the things you mention fit the definition.

    The other part of the answer to your question is the development of knitting machines able to create stockings from fine cotton or silk thread made the second type of thing more attainable.