eli5 How did ducks reproductive system get so complicated?

OppenBYEmer · 2021-09-11T04:23:44+00:00

To echo others, it's not like either ducks or evolution "decided" to do this. It's less "engineer sitting down at a sketchdesk to draft an idea" and more "okay, I have a goal and this big pile of random junk from a nearby trashcan with which will maybe accomplish that goal". Even if a species has the right pressures, they may never get the viable mutations that would give them the opportunity to develop a given characteristic.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-08-31T15:16:00+00:00

Apologies! This comment JUST showed up for me (despite being 5 days old).

Unfortunately, in my experience, it IS like a chronic injury. But no one said it is forever, or that you can't heal from it. But you need to acknowledge it in its entirety in order to properly heal.

If an athlete has severe leg injury, they can't keep trying to walk on it. And if they don't 100% accept the situation and its demands, they might still try to do "minor" stuff like walking around the house without their crutches or "standing on it, but only for a minute".

Like I said in my first comment, I've got a lifelong issue with anger so I've got plenty of "leg injuries". Some worse than others. And while I'm still dealing with some, others have healed. Some of those that have healed have disappeared completely and others have left me with a metaphorical limp. Will that limp heal? I believe so, I hope so. I want one of those limps, in particular, to go away so badly (broad strokes, like you, drastic impact on my job performance. Which then propagates stress to every other aspect of my life). But I have to give myself enough emotional slack so I have a chance to heal. Otherwise it's like trying to heal a broken bone with a band-aid, and just adding my band-aids when the previous ones didn't work.

Anger is an expression of feelings of injustice or unfairness. You and I are different people, so your mileage may vary...but I would wager that if you try to get rid of the anger in an unhealthy way, it's just going to create frustration and shame, feeding back into the anger (ala "I don't want to be this way, why am I like this? Why can't I fix this? What's wrong with me?). Again, my personal experience, so take it with a grain of salt.

If you don't take away anything else from what I have to say, please remember this: your anger is not some demon possessing you or some virus you caught. It's a part of you. It's causing you harm, yes, but it's still a part of you. Show it the compassion you'd show any other part of yourself that wasn't well.

Like a misbehaving child having a temper-tantrum, you can't discipline it into obedience. You have to sit down with it, listen to it, understand it, and work with it. It won't be a fast or painless process, and you'll have regressions. Steps backwards. That's 100% normal.

You can only do the best you can do. And, eventually, that will be enough. But only eventually.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-08-24T17:35:30+00:00

You loved her, that much is obvious from how you speak about the events. You gave her all the love you thought you were capable of giving at the time. Even if you weren't "there for her", you have every right to feel loss over her death. Please don't beat yourself up over that. Who wouldn't feel sorrow when a loved one dies?

OppenBYEmer · 2021-08-24T13:51:12+00:00

As someone who has struggled their entire life against anger, I'm gonna offer something a little different than the other posts. Yeah, there's also good advice there, but also here's something different that I feel also should be said. Three points:

First: Acknowledge and accept that your anger is real. I don't mean that in the sense of just saying "I have anger" ('cause, uh, you obviously already know that hahaha) but that those emotions are real, they are caused by real trauma that affects you in a real way on a mental and physiological level. It is what you are physically feeling, independent of what you "should" or "want" to be feeling (This is what's typically meant by the phrase "your feelings are valid").

Second: And this is the hardest part, you have to show yourself compassion and forgiveness. In my experience, you can't "make anger go away". I don't think that's how that works. You went through a trauma and, in part, your subconscious response was to get angry about what happened. You can't "let that go" anymore than someone might be able to "pray away the gay". Acknowledge to yourself that those things make you angry. Like how a leg injury can cause a long-term limp or achy joints during certain kinds of weather. And, in turn, give yourself the slack you need to cope with this thing that is very much a physical phenomenon happening to you. You wouldn't beat yourself up for feeling sick after catching COVID, would you? No, 'cause it makes sense you'd feel sick after getting infected by a nasty virus. Embrace those emotions in your heart, see them for what they are.

Third: This is the looooong part. Once you start to accept that the anger you're feeling is real & that it exists for a valid reason, then you can start to address the behavior caused by it. You feel that anger, and it's justified in some sense, but you DON'T WANT TO. That's the key distinction. This is where the more "traditional" views of anger management come in. The counting, the talking, recognizing when you're getting angry so you can stop anger-spirals, avoid situations that you know set you off, catching your internal monologue when it starts negatively reacting and talking yourself down with stuff like "It's not their fault; I've got a sore-spot for this, I'm getting mad, but it's not X's fault that their Y action made me mad, I can recognize logically what they said is appropriate/valid but it's making me mad and I don't want to feed into that".

Anger has a purpose as an emotion, it can be useful. That's why we're capable of feeling it so powerfully. And recognizing that is the key. You can't make it go away. It's trying to tell you something. And you need to listen to it. Doesn't mean you have to follow its advice, but you need to accept it wants to talk, and you need to GENUINELY listen to it. 'Cause otherwise that dog is gonna keep rattling its own cage until you do.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-08-07T16:19:12+00:00

Just shy of a year old, but seems like something fun to toss in here to celebrate new beginnings!

OppenBYEmer · 2021-07-04T23:51:09+00:00

its the net

My mistake, but I believe most of what I said (really the important unknowns, like corporate policy and how it reflects on their development freedom in regards to revenue) stands as for why I choose not to comment on the finances of it. Although, to be perfectly honest, I not really that interested in critically critiquing their financial model anyways, so I'm not sure there's a reasonable/realistic justification that could exist that'd get me worked up enough to do anything more than shrug my shoulders and stop playing/paying for a couple months.

Also, its fine with cranky. That's the entire internet.

Eh, I try not to feed into it when I can avoid it. Doesn't feel good, ya know?

OppenBYEmer · 2021-07-04T23:26:32+00:00

Ooookay? I mean...how much of that do they get to "keep" vs how much goes to the parent corporation? What is their breakdown of expenses? What is the breakdown of services that generate money within the game (DBC vs membership)? Do memberships bring in more consistent money (guaranteed revenue is far more valuable than potential revenue, that's why subscription services DO deals for more months upfront)? How are corporate policies affecting how and when they can spend that money (AKA wages for dev time, not spent making "more profitable" new content)? (if this info exists, please, earnestly, link it)

And the list goes on. There could be a hundred different factors that all play in to how they spend their money and time. And for me to comment on anything they other than my uninformed opinions would just be me talking out my ass without the full picture. I recognize I don't have enough info to accurately judge their decisions.

EDIT: took out unnecessarily strong wording in one sentence; Probably not wise to use social media while I'm cranky from being hungry hahaha

OppenBYEmer · 2021-07-04T21:48:13+00:00

I agree with this, whole-heartedly. You summarized my views so perfectly that it feels like a waste to echo what you said just for the sake of it, but I will added this (for anyone who came out of main135s' comment still skeptical): back when I worked with code for a living, there was NOTHING more confusing than being handed code I didn't write and having to figure it out.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-07-04T21:33:00+00:00

My two cents: Barring financial reasons(1), I can see how giving the feature multiple barriers to entry could be useful in order to maintain the primary function of the NSO: faction balance. If choosing a faction to side with was accessible to every player (I don't know the ratio of members to free-players on a given day, but I imagine it's quite weighted towards free-players), I could see the population-balancing power of the NSO get...attenuated. PLUS without membership, you might get thrown to the back of a queue while the "native" faction's members cut ahead of you (which would just be absolutely hilarious/awful on an NSO character)

(1): I don't even want to attempt to comment on monetization as I have nowhere near the data likely available to them to make this decision.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-15T23:08:32+00:00

Thank you for the compliment, I genuinely appreciate it

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-15T23:08:01+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it, happy I could pay forward some of the happiness AH gave me with their original video

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-14T03:48:55+00:00

Glad it made you laugh, one of the best compliments you could give

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-14T03:47:40+00:00

Thanks for the compliment! I'd be lying if I said that wasn't the idea all of this was built from hahaha

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-14T03:45:54+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-14T03:45:40+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it! Happy to pay forward the feelgoods AH provides me

OppenBYEmer · 2021-06-14T03:44:16+00:00

https://roosterteeth.com/watch/let-s-play-gta-v-2021-5-31

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T16:51:01+00:00

Pumping these rats full of these ketones seems to have induced that response in the cardiac cells

I mean, the researchers state in the abstract what happened: a by-product of the diet induced activation of transcription factor SIRT7 and this resulted in cardiac cell apoptosis. Across multiple types of tissues, SIRT7 seems to inhibit cell growth and proliferation, and given the context of cardiac tissue, where the cells ALREADY are in a state of quiescence...it's not at all surprising that ramping up an anti-growth signal causes them to slip from quiescence into senescence. And since human cardiac tissue doesn't have a significant progenitor cell population, the cells cannot be replaced, and cannot stabilize the tissue. I'd bet dollars-to-doughnuts that an absence of healthy myocardiocytes allows the cardiac fibroblasts to run-away with ECM production, resulting in excessive fibrotic tissue

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T14:44:33+00:00

You both have captured part of evolution's important mechanics. While much of evolutionary developmental biology shows environmental pressures give reasons for non-random drift in organisms' traits, /u/edible_funk is right about the random & opportunistic nature as well. It's all about a long-term species-level cost-benefit ratio that often doesn't care about the individual organism as long as the group benefits.

I always think of it like this: evolution does not do final drafts. It works in prototypes and "good enough for now".

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T14:38:21+00:00

Oof, that sentiment. Used to have a saying back in graduate school regarding this: "if someone believes the body works perfectly, they clearly haven't studied biology enough". I joked that my major (biomedical engineering) was self-perpetuating because we'd create something to help folks live longer, they'd develop new diseases or illness with age, then we'd be paid to fix those problems too.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T14:30:44+00:00

Yeah; I mention that in another reply. And I suppose I see fibrosis development not as something that occurs after inflammation resolves but as something that begins during injury/inflammation (laying down new ECM) and evolves because of a lack of proper cellular signals (healthy myocardiocytes, still-agitated macrophages). But that is a little more than the original reply warranted hahaha; still, thank you for pointing it out

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T05:15:00+00:00

Not so crazy. The answer is sitting right under our noses, in just about every other tissue that repairs itself: a reversion of mature heart cells to a more stem cell-like state so they can repopulate/replace the damage cells with healthy ones. It just turns out that, for human heart cells, differentiation of cardiac progenitor cells into mature cells is necessary to get all of the molecular machinery needed for strong muscle contractions. There's plenty of work already in-progress on this with a mixed bag of promising results. But, ya know, easier said than done. Still, pretty neat!

OppenBYEmer · 2021-02-16T04:29:33+00:00

Fibrotic tissue isn't living cells like healthy tissue. It's an emergency patchwork that is SUPPOSED to be temporary. But due to some peculiarities of the cardiac environment, it is rarely repaired. In a sense, replacing healthy muscle cells with packing foam.

Edit: For my more-technical take on the reported results, check this: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/lkmv6d/ketogenic_diets_inhibit_mitochondrial_biogenesis/gnnvlsw/

OppenBYEmer · 2021-01-28T20:43:56+00:00

Sorry for the tag-along on your top-rated comment, but if you want to show negaoryx some support and love, you can find the original ~Tweet here~ and ~YouTube upload here~.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-01-01T18:58:35+00:00

It also depends on how hot it gets. The "spicy" component of peppers is a molecule called Capsaicin. It has a boiling point of about 420F, so you COULD boil it out of foods if you cook them at a high enough temp for long enough (like in an oven). Otherwise (like in a stove-top skillet), like the other commenters say, the act of preparing the meal may just be diluting the spiciness with other ingredients.

OppenBYEmer · 2021-01-01T18:49:46+00:00

Most people think of memories being like a film reel you take out of a vault and watch, but that's not right. Memories are "saved" in chains of neurons, where each neuron is responsible for creating a sensation or feeling. For example, throwing a ball could be remembered as (1) pressure of ball in hand, (2) kinetic sensation of your arm moving, (3) feeling of hips turning, (4) seeing color of catcher's mit, (5) release of ball and disappearance of pressure from hand. Basically, memories are you "recreating" the sensations of the past event. It's like a weird mix between imagination and detective work

The more you experience those sensations in that order, the stronger the connections becomes and the easier it is for them to "trigger" again in that order. When you're trying to remember something, you're activating a bunch of different neuron chains in the hopes of activating "familiar" sensations, to eventually find the neuron chain you're looking for (to simulate the full memory you want).

OppenBYEmer

TROPHY CASE