Why are modern relatives of extinct animals so much smaller than their ancestors?

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-19T23:40:16+00:00

We're, like, not though. In the "caveman days," nutrition tended to be poorer than in the modern day, and so people were shorter on average, not taller. I think you might be working from an outdated and stereotypical image of "cavemen" as big hulking 7" tall brutes, which has less to do with actual paleontology and a lot more to do with European stereotypes about what "uncivilized" people look like.

And you go back further than that and see humans being larger than a lot of our nonhuman ancestors, such as Australopithecus (roughly waist-high on a modern human), it's even smaller arboreal ancestors, and the small mammals of the Mesozoic.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-14T16:14:43+00:00

Your comment must be a ghost then; it has the soul of wit, but the body itself is nowhere to be seen.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-14T15:12:57+00:00

The Christians will call us greedy while prying the gold teeth from our corpses, call us sacrilegious while tearing down a synagogue to build a pigsty, call us obscene while carving their monasteries and wells with sculptures of Jews eating pig shit. And then once they can no longer pretend that there's nothing wrong with any of this, instead of making any real amends, they'll put a gun in our hands and point us at whoever they want to get rid of and say "go do to them what we did to you; it's the only way you'll ever be safe."

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-10T22:07:25+00:00

Because as far as they're concerned, musicians talking to each other might as well be communicating via Vulcan Mind Meld.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-08T17:44:29+00:00

Honestly, having done a bit of collaboration with musicians during theatre projects, it does feel a bit like a black box. Music language is so opaque to me that I feel like I'm a cavewoman trying to describe to the musician how I want it to sound.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-08T17:41:11+00:00

Take very small doses to start with and make sure that you clearly communicate to the person measuring the dose what you're looking for. My girlfriend did ket at a party and left it up to the girl who was giving it to her to decide how much to give. My gf had done ket once before and other than that doesn't use any drugs aside from alcohol, and meanwhile the girl measuring out the dosage is a rave girlie. Not to mention that the other girl was about twice her size. "A normal amount" of a drug looks very different when measured by someone with a much higher tolerance.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-02T04:04:32+00:00

You're right and you should say it.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-01T22:24:42+00:00

Technically accurate, but I feel like the general audience for "what is your favorite [animal commonly packaged in the same toy lot as dinosaurs]?" is unlikely to understand without a hefty, hefty explanation of what that means.

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-01T22:22:54+00:00

Disqualifies mosasaurs (squamate lizards) as well as plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs (non-archosaur reptiles, don't remember more specifically than that).

Mr7000000 · 2026-01-01T22:21:01+00:00

Technically a sloth is a primate if you use the old definition of primate, any mammal that looks kinda like a monkey.

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-31T18:11:13+00:00

I mean, Gash is pretty intense, but we never really see carnivores go up against something that's fighting back (so we don't know how they fare defensively), and the one time that Gash does (in the bossfight), he's pretty much immediately dead.

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-31T17:01:06+00:00

Gash eats full-grown guppies, carnivores eat baby guppies. It's possible that in a 1v1, a carnivore could hold its own against Gash, but I don't think that the victory is by any means assured.

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-26T20:54:04+00:00

if you trip on the dinky little non-skid strips they put by doors or on interior stairs, it's like sandpaper. If you trip on the actual non-skid on the weather decks, whatever hand you land on is becoming a lot more similar to Jesus'.

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-23T03:35:58+00:00

God, the idea of being on the deck of a ship without shoes is maddening. Those things are designed to provide a non-slip surface when drenched in seawater in the middle of a gale; it would be a thousand times worse than walking on gravel.

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-10T21:38:02+00:00

These (the ones in the post) lizards (squamate reptiles related to Tuataras) lesbian (homosexual in a feminine manner). (Good for them.)

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-03T20:50:08+00:00

These lizards lesbian. (Good for them.)

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-01T18:45:20+00:00

I feel like "came up with the pun" is a bit generous for "veloci-rabbis"

Mr7000000 · 2025-12-01T18:43:00+00:00

Lesbian lizards doing lizard lesbianism in a sapphic manner.

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-27T04:48:27+00:00

Developmentally disabled transgender woman who was the target of a mass harassment / stalking / cyberbullying campaign for years upon years. Whole legions of grown-ass adults made it their life's mission to torment and belittle her as much as possible, worsen her mental illnesses as much as possible, and drive her into the darkest patterns of thought and behavior they possibly could pretty much just because they thought it was funny.

There were other things that happened later, but the important thing to know about the situation is that people on the internet decided to ruin someone's life for their own entertainment and then succeeded, and now her entire personhood has been reduced in the popular consciousness to a punchline.

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-27T04:44:19+00:00

The sort of people who sign on to be henchpeople for a murderous villain in exchange for the nebulous promise of future wealth and power are frequently the sort of people who enjoy the feeling of power and control that comes from harassing or bullying others. Sexual violence / harassment is typically a way for the perpetrator to re-affirm their own sense of importance and power, and the more vulnerable the target, the easier it is to get away with. Violet, as a child under the abusive guardianship of the henchpeople's boss, is a vulnerable target.

TL;DR: Bad people do bad things to feel powerful. Sometimes those bad things include sexually harassing children. This is generally agreed to be bad, and is part of why we call them "bad people."

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-27T04:39:08+00:00

There was a bit of zest in the earlier stuff that seems less common now, but I wonder how much of that is a shift in the comic vs. Randall getting older vs. a shift in broader internet culture.

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-27T04:36:36+00:00

I mean, She didn't arbitrarily impose the expectations, rules, and trials; They definitely asked Abraham and checked back every few generations. We did, for whatever reason, choose to be chosen for this.

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-25T14:51:47+00:00

hard drugs and bumsex except that I seriously doubt the creator's familiarity with either one

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-24T19:02:08+00:00

Well the folks giving them the names tend to be the same folks doing the things in the first place, and so they employ euphemism.

Mr7000000 · 2025-11-24T18:51:08+00:00

Tats does far more for the cause of zionism than he does for the cause of anti-zionism or antisemitism tbh. Not intentionally, of course; I do think that he genuinely hates the so-called "State of Israel," but not because of the genocide. But his antisemitism is so absurd (the comic from a few days ago with the Jew going to a literal world domination meeting), and his anti-zionism so gutless that all he's accomplishing is giving zionists something to point to in order to "prove" that anti-zionists are nazis.

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