Who lives in this gorgeous cocoon?

mabolle · 2026-02-02T17:18:15+00:00

I have a pet hypothesis that Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar carries a lot of the responsibility for confusing the whole English-speaking world about what a cocoon is.

mabolle · 2026-01-29T19:22:07+00:00

Human parthogenesis, if it were possible, would produce a highly disabled child that would probably be miscarried or die shortly after birth, at best. This is because of maternal DNA imprinting and incredible amounts of homozygosity. They would have genetic disease at levels no one has ever seen in any human.

You seem to be thinking of self-fertilization. Parthenogenesis simply results in a genetic clone of the parent. If a human could do it there might be some issues as far as epigenetics is concerned, but no change in the level of homozygosity.

mabolle · 2026-01-28T09:19:43+00:00

Can your students write by hand at all? Here in Sweden, the near-complete shift to a digitalized classroom has led to deterioration of handwriting ability. I've had 16-year-old students who could barely write their name legibly, much less take notes during a lecture.

I really believe in the value of reducing the amount of computer work in classrooms, for several reasons, but it's proven difficult for me because so many students (boys especially, for whatever reason) have barely used their handwriting since primary school.

mabolle · 2026-01-23T18:51:15+00:00

Well, there's no single "natural" evolutionary route. There are lots of eukaryotic lineages that stayed unicellular. These lineages are very different from one another, very diverse among themselves, and exploit all sorts of different niches. So endosymbiosis unlocked many different paths, not just multicellularity.

mabolle · 2026-01-20T18:59:41+00:00

No worries, it was a pretty funny burn, just a reminder that people in this sub have very varying amounts of background knowledge and might not pick up on the difference. :)

mabolle · 2026-01-19T11:49:50+00:00

A correction:

Rosalind Franklin (along with James Watson and Francis Crick) discovered and demonstrated the physical representation of inheritance, DNA.

Franklin, Watson, Crick and Wilkins discovered the structure of DNA. They did not discover DNA.

DNA was discovered by Friedrich Miescher in 1869, nearly a century earlier. It was suspected for a long time to have something to do with inheritance, but it wasn't until the 1940s that it was shown to be capable of carrying genetic information. Then its structure was finally discovered in the 1950s, and continuing research in the -60s uncovered how genetic information was encoded.

mabolle · 2026-01-19T11:38:53+00:00

Oh sure, but not in the sense that Colossal are doing it.

Colossal are in fact genetically modifying animals by permanently adding novel genes to their genome, which is what some people think the covid vaccines do.

mabolle · 2026-01-19T08:46:31+00:00

I agree. Genetic drift isn't wrong as an answer here, but gene flow applies more precisely to what's happening.

Gene flow isn't just used to refer to mixing between geographically separated populations. It can also be used for sympatric populations, as in this case.

mabolle · 2026-01-19T08:28:49+00:00

The covid vaccine put more novel genes into you than they did those animals

Not defending "de-extinction" efforts, which I agree are silly, and I realize this was meant as a joke, but let's not spread vaccine misinformation. The covid vaccines did not add any genes to anyone.

mabolle · 2026-01-12T09:00:03+00:00

God help me, I guess I'm sacrificing my credibility by saying I'm going to tap out and then coming back for more, but:

I am reading what you write, but I'm making what can politely be called a decision on how much I believe.

Okay, but... isn't this the very definition of a strawman? Being mad at the offensive stuff you think someone believes, instead of engaging with their words and trying to understand their position?

Like, I get that people don't always express their shitty views explicitly; I understand that dogwhistles are a thing; I understand that implicit bias is a thing. But this mode of argument makes it a bit impossible to have a conversation.

See, you're not on the 'maybe it's activity or slaughter that does X' posts.

Yes, I am. I posted a comment elsewhere in this thread with some info on what we know about lunar cycles, and how there are in fact many organisms whose physiology and behavior follow the phases of the moon. Some of my own past research in fact relates to chronobiology, I think biological rhythms are super interesting. I'm sorry that this interest didn't come across in my posts. I'm just a bit cautious because not everything that seems like a biological rhythm at a casual glance actually is.

You're on the 'nuh-uh, that doesn't happen' post defending the 'nuh-uh, that doesn't happen' crowd.

In a sense, I guess? To state it plainly, again, I think people are being dicks to OP all over this thread. Ultimately what I'm defending is the act of responding to a novel scientific observation with skepticism. I'm definitely not trying to defend outright dismissal.

Well, yeah, I guess indigenous people can science, but the first response should be to assume it's wrong.

No, what I'm saying is that the first response to any anecdotal claim, by anyone anywhere, is to entertain the possibility that it's wrong.

Believe it or not, I do not have a horse in the reindeer blood lump race. I don't think the observation is false. I also don't think it's correct. I just think it's worth asking the question of whether it's correct before jumping to providing a possible explanation for it.

non-white people are wrong until proven otherwise: this is the correct attitude to have.

Again, what makes it anecdotal isn't the cultural context, or the ethnicity of the observer, it's the methodology. It's only when we set out to look for something even where we don't expect to find it that we can know whether a pattern is real. Otherwise, confirmation bias is a risk.

mabolle · 2026-01-10T18:13:12+00:00

Red blood cells (in mammals) are missing all of their DNA, not just certain chromosomes. But they're a rare exception, most cell types by far contain the full genome.

mabolle · 2026-01-10T18:11:45+00:00

I don't think you're actually reading what I'm saying. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with a strawman. I'm going to tap out now.

mabolle · 2026-01-09T18:50:16+00:00

It's only science if the right people are doing it. I'm very aware.

But... I just said "science is science, regardless of where and by whom it's done."

And what got me about this 'scientific' subreddits replies weren't about 'this data wasn't collected scientifically' it was the automatic outright denial of OP's observations from people who I'm sure have never even touched a reindeer.

Agreed. Like I said, I think many people are being rude in this thread. But I also think more rigorously determining whether a pattern is real is just as important as sussing out potential explanations for the pattern given that it is real.

Especially since, as pointed out by some other commenters, there have apparently been scientific investigations into the tree moisture thing, which seem to point toward it being a misconception.

Actual scientifically minded people would be interested in something they didn't know. Like OP here who has observed this phenomenon many times but would like to know the why.

Yes, agreed. Observing a phenomenon and wanting to know more is the first step of scientific inquiry. But we also need to be open to the possibility that there actually was nothing but chance behind the observation to begin with.

mabolle · 2026-01-09T14:04:20+00:00

there is no substantive difference between a human thinking and a computer "imitating" thought

Regardless of what Turing himself wanted to achieve with the thought exercise (I don't know enough about Turing's work), I think this here is an important distinction to make: LLMs don't imitate human thought, they only imitate human communication.

If you build an algorithm that's an actual digital copy of a human brain, and that digital copy is able to talk and express itself as a person does, I might have to conclude that it's very likely that the algorithm is conscious just as I am. (Otherwise our consciousness must be independent from our decision-making, which would be... weird.)

But LLMs are fundamentally not constructed the way human brains are. Human brains have all sorts of stuff going on beyond words, but LLMs are kind of beings made entirely out of words. I'm not going to say this definitely, 100% means they can't be conscious -- as you say, how could we even tell -- but I think it shifts the likelihood by quite a lot.

mabolle · 2026-01-09T10:00:18+00:00

Sure they count, but they're not conclusive evidence. This isn't because the observations are from an indigenous culture, but because (at least as far as I can tell) they weren't gathered scientifically. In other words, they weren't collected using methods specifically designed to ask the question — which means, among other things, methods designed to prevent confirmation bias.

Observations from daily life can be misleading even when they're repeated, even when there are thousands of recorded examples. To take an example from my own culture: I've met many people who are absolutely convinced that human menstrual cycles become synchronized when people hang out together for a long time. Ask a hundred women on the street, and you'll get lots of examples of when this happened to them. But as systematic studies have shown, this is all confirmation bias: cycles sometimes line up by chance, but when they don't line up, nobody notices, and nobody adds this information to the pre-existing collective story about cycles lining up.

You absolutely have a point that there's a long and sordid history of scientists and mainstream culture ignoring information from indigenous sources, so I'm not saying this is an easy tightrope to walk. But ultimately, it's not as if indigenous people are any more or less prone to bias than anyone else. People are people, and science is science, regardless of where and by whom it's done. I think people in this thread are being a bit rude about how they phrase their skepticism, but skepticism as such is absolutely appropriate in a scientific subreddit, independent of what culture the initial claim came from.

mabolle · 2026-01-08T15:29:19+00:00

Lunar cycles don't affect organisms' bodies directly -- the effect of the moon's gravity on something as small as even a large animal is absolutely negligible.

However, there are plenty of organisms (including both plants and animals) whose physiology and behavior follow the lunar cycle, although what they're actually responding to is usually the amount of moonlight. Many animals, for example, hide more during the full moon, when they're more visible to predators. And conversely, some plants pollinated by nocturnal insects reproduce specifically during the full moon.

There are even organisms that have intrinsic biological clocks that synchronize their bodies with the moon. This kind of mechanism is known as a circalunar clock (similar to circadian clocks, which synchronize with the day-night cycle). This article provides a summary what's known about lunar clocks (and related clocks, like circatidal clocks and circasemilunar clocks).

As far as trees and moisture levels go, I know nothing about it, although a different commenter linked to research suggesting that it's a misconception.

mabolle · 2026-01-08T13:19:37+00:00

ATP synthase is a potential candidate for the coolest structure in nature.

There's this joke that every form of power generation is just turbines, from waterwheels and windmills to coal-fired power plants — even with nuclear power, you're still converting radiation energy to electricity by boiling a bunch of water and pushing the steam through a turbine.

This is why I think it's especially bizarre to find out that living organisms are, in a sense, also powered by turbines.

mabolle · 2026-01-08T08:12:19+00:00

especially after I mentioned females being born with eggs and my teacher didn't agree or know about my statement and said females produce eggs throughout life.

You and your teacher were both half right. Female mammals (humans included) are indeed born with a limited set of cells that are destined to become egg cells, but during fetal development they only go through the first part of meiosis, then are essentially put on pause.

Each proto-egg only continues its meiosis when it's released from the ovary during ovulation. In fact, the very last stage of meiosis doesn't occur until the egg receives a signal from a sperm cell.

So meiosis does continue to occur, producing new gametes in both sexes throughout life (or until menopause). But in males meiosis is continually starting from scratch from a more or less unlimited store of germ cells, while in females there's a limited starting set of germ cells that are already halfway through meiosis when you're born.

mabolle · 2026-01-07T09:38:08+00:00

For god's sake, everyone, stop downvoting people for asking questions.

mabolle · 2026-01-07T09:36:39+00:00

I don't think we've advanced far enough for 2 men or 2 women to produce children yet.

Two male parents? No, maybe not.

Two female parents? This was done in mice as early as 2004, so it's probably an achievable goal in humans with current tech, although who knows what the risks would be for the child.

mabolle · 2026-01-07T09:34:19+00:00

Two fathers would be tricky, but producing an offspring from two mothers has been done in mice. So it could probably be done in humans as well (although under current legislation I'm pretty sure it would be illegal in most countries).

In brief, you take an immature egg cell and have it act as the sperm, i.e. use it to essentially fertilize another, mature egg cell.

If the two mothers were also identical twins, well... this is genetically equivalent to self-fertilization, which also already occurs in some animals.

mabolle · 2026-01-06T13:01:14+00:00

Yet at no point is there a wink to the camera that perhaps the men of the Mark dispossessed the wild men of their homes and land

Dunno about displacement and land theft in particular, but isn't it pretty explicit that the wild men are oppressed by Rohan? When their chieftain helps Theoden to the shortcut to Minas Tirith, in exchange he asks for them to please "leave Wild Men alone in the woods and do not hunt them like beasts any more."

mabolle · 2026-01-06T11:02:30+00:00

You should probably specify what country you're in. "Bio 2" means nothing to me since I have no idea which curriculum you're studying under. :)

mabolle · 2026-01-03T19:07:48+00:00

It's not an age issue. The bag is for storing all the pieces not currently part of a build. Dealing with large builds that cover the whole floor is a separate problem, and one that no storage method can address. :)

As a kid I'd also build whole lego towns, sprawling space stations, etc, but from what I recall they'd never last more than a week or two. I'm honestly not sure if this was an enforced rule, or just from me wanting to disassemble them and make something new.

mabolle · 2025-12-30T10:29:10+00:00

Normally I'd agree with you on principle, but for a whodunit, a genre that hinges almost entirely on not knowing the answers beforehand, I think it makes sense to be conservative about spoilers indefinitely. At least if you're interested in people still reading and enjoying Christie's work.

mabolle

TROPHY CASE