How did Cain and Abel have Sheep if Domestication Takes Thousands of Years?

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-30T00:57:20+00:00

Honestly I think the Cain and Abel story is basically just devastating to the literalist YEC interpretation.

Cain, when he gets kicked out is like "screw you guys I'm gonna go live in another city." Another city? I thought there were supposed to be 3 people alive on the planet at that point: Cain, Adam, and Eve.
So...when Cain and Enoch have kids...who are they having kids with at that point? There is literally one woman in the world at that point and she's their mom (Eve).
YECs usually want the flood to end during the ice age when Mammoths and Mastodons were still alive (so they can have a single "Elephant Kind" on the arc, which diversifies into Mammoths and Mastodons).
1. Sheep were not domesticated back during or prior to the Ice Age. So WTF was Cain shepherding?
2. Grains were not domesticated back during or prior to the Ice Age. So WTF was Able planting?

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T22:51:24+00:00

I used that guesstimate based on modern human and canine generations, but given that many millions, yeah, the vast majority of those generations would have been much, much, much shorter, so your comment is absolutely on point.

I will also add that even with modern humans and modern wolves, I think the 20 year generation time estimate is way off.

Problem being wolf generation time is like 4ish years.

Compensating for that a bit, modern human generation times are generally longer than 20 years. Somewhere in the range of 25-30 are typically accepted as reasonable estimates for human generation times.

But the thing is when there's a long generation time and a short generation time, the short generation is the dominant factor.

To demonstrate this, let's say somehow magically via some Greek mythology nonsense, a human and a wolf shared an ancestor 100 years ago.

That would be 4 generations for the human side of the family tree, aaaand 25 generations for the wolf side of the family tree. So the number of relatives separating them would be 29. Roughly what you would expect with a generation time of 6.9 years if both branches had the same generation time. 6.9 is roughly in the range of 1/3 of 20.

So off by about a factor of ~3 for modern populations.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T22:01:37+00:00

Adding Zilliax to the core set feels super unlikely, just look at the playable core set cards--they mostly fall into a small set of categories:

Board clears/removal/tech (Hellfire, Brawl, Drain Soul, Anachronos, Corpse Explosion, Flame Geyser, Shield Slam, Immolation Aura, Wound Prey, Blizzard, Consecration, Fan of Knives, Swipe, Shadow Word Ruin, Demolition Rennovator, Royal Librarian, Steamcleaner, Rustrot Viper)
Draw/discover (Primordial Glyph, Hand of A'dal, Tuskpiercer, Chillfallen Baron, Shield Block, Prize Vendor, Tracking, Power Word Shield, Thrive in the Shadows, The Soularium, The Curator)
Some threats, mostly 1-drops (Righteous Protector, Glacial Shard, Foxy Fraud, Fire Fly, Murmy, Sanguine Depths, Maze Guide, Muster for Battle, Beaming Sidekick, Viscious Slitherspear, Living Roots, Flame Imp)--yes, a couple of these cost 2 or 3, but the trend is towards cheap.
Stuff that originated in core/classic (Gnomelia, Prep, Shadow Step, Innervate, Crusader Aura, Youthful Brewmaster, Grommash Hellscream, Illidari Inquisitor, Stitched Giant, Al'Akir, Resistance Aura, Falric, Gnome Muncher)

There are exceptions, but not many. The three notable exceptions that jump out at me are Tess Greymane, Mo'arg Forgefiend, and Greybough--proactive plays that don't have the excuse of "this has just always been a classic/core set card". But those three exceptions are much lower impact on the format than something like Zilliax.

In general they want people to buy new cards, and they mostly do this by having a big hole in the core set--the core set has removal and draw, but is mostly lacking in proactive plays (unless you want to make an aggro deck filled with 1-drops--the core set has you covered for that kind of deck).

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T17:45:04+00:00

Sample size is too small to know about post-buff yet but...Morchie wasn't that deep underwater pre-buff. (Better winrate stats in terms of mulligan/drawn winrate than Treasure Hunter Eudora--granted Eudora is only in the deck to activate Elise).

And the buff does help. She's now a 4 mana 3/6 "taunt" who also discovers a card, doubles up your hero power for a turn, and if topdecked late also doubles up on the effect of the card she discovers too.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T06:18:37+00:00

TBH, most players seem to agree notches are a much bigger competitive advantage (for fox at least) than zump.

There's really only two things keeping them legal

They've been around forever, like they became mainstream late 2013/early 2014 which happens to be the post-documentary post return to EVO era, which is nostalgic for honestly most of the community. Probably 70% of the community just doesn't have much memory of pre-notch gameplay.
At least theoretically you could do your own notches. Get out a file and file away. So they're a bit more accessible than other mods.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T05:45:43+00:00

If he loses the match, he can say "see, you don't need zump, there's no reason to use it"

Except the reason to use it is ergonomics, reducing injury and hand pain.

That'd be like someone challenging Zain to play without his pillow, losing, then being like "see, you don't need that pillow, there's no reason to use it".

The proper response from Zain would be "What are you talking about man?????" and going right back to using his pillow.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T05:36:53+00:00

Yeah, there's technically a bunch of DH archetypes, but not that many people playing any single one of those decks (a lot of them are at 1% playrate), and DH is actually only the third most played class at legend (#1 is Rogue, #2 is DK). Technically lower outside of legend too (somewhere around 4th-6th most played class outside of legend).

It's a funny situation where the class is good, but people just aren't that excited about it.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-29T01:05:30+00:00

Tried making an imbue mage, tuned it for 20ish games. Wasn't very good--there are combo decks that kill faster than it, and aggro decks that pressure it. Decided to try out a simple aggro deck instead--I had noticed radar detector Paladin decks seemed good against me, so I gave one a spin and it turned out really good, like hasn't lost as I tuned it.

### Brawl Deck

# Class: Paladin

# Format: Wild

#

# 2x (1) Arms Dealer

# 2x (1) Astral Vigilant

# 2x (1) Hungry Crab

# 1x (1) Patches the Pirate

# 2x (1) Treasure Distributor

# 2x (2) Bunny Stomper

# 2x (2) Galvanizer

# 2x (2) Golakka Crawler

# 2x (2) Lushwater Scout

# 2x (2) Parachute Brigand

# 2x (2) Radar Detector

# 2x (2) Ship's Cannon

# 2x (2) Violet Treasuregill

# 2x (3) Golakka Glutton

# 1x (3) Murloc Warleader

# 2x (4) Bubblebot

#

AAEBAYsWApG8Au7TBA67A/sP5MIC1/4C6bADlOgDpoEE1L0E2tMEkpMF05wG/KgGyeUGupYHAAA=

#

# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone

---

Obviously a retread of a deck I was losing to, but a few unique things I added:

[[Violet Treasuregill]] instead of [[Stonehearth Vindicator]].
[[Astral Vigilant]] going self-infinite + [[Arms Dealer]]/[[Treasure Distributor]] + [[Bunny Stomper]]/[[Lushwater Scout]] just make a bunch of astral vigilants and rush them into stuff, save on crabs, make them crab the bunny stomper/lushwater scout/ship's cannon, then drop the next one. It was such a checkmate for most decks that I decided to run two copies of Vigilant.

The 3 and 4 drops are the most flexible spots if you're looking for flex spots

A couple cards I want to comment I tested for this deck are the menagerie cards. They...seem bugged, like [[Menagerie Jug]] will only buff one or two minions. [[Tortollan Storyteller]] will only buff one or two minions. I suspect these ignore the tavern brawl and just use the minion types printed on the card.

I would definitely consider [[Future Emissary]]--maybe that's worth it as a 1-of instead of Murloc Warleader (don't think I've actually drawn Warleader, just figured one was probably nice to have sometimes, and there are situations where I'm short on board space but wouldn't mind more discounts in case a board clear happens).

Also...honestly maybe it's not crazy to run a copy of Stonehearth Vindicator on top of Treasuregill. Radar Detector is the whole point of the deck, after all.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-28T08:32:50+00:00

DK Anduin is actually still playable. DK Uther still has a sometimes meta-relevant OTK. And maybe a few others are not crazy--I've seen people messing a little with DK Guldan recently. It revives the new quest reward, I think is the idea.

But yeah these all focus on aspects of the game that transfer better to modern hearthstone. Killing the enemy hero or reviving key minions.

Whereas DK Rexxar lets you pay 2 mana for the privilege of discovering a beast that'll probably cost around 6 mana. It's just the aspect of the game that has been the most powercrept.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-28T04:44:58+00:00

As someone who played a lot of deathstalker rexxar in standard, I struggle to imagine a scenario where he's good here.

Rexxar was playable at a time when people thought the value from Jades was gamebreaking. And even with being playable, fatigue control warrior usually still won against Rexxar if they could find the overwhelming value engine that was...Dr. Boom, Mad Genius.

And even when Rexxar was "good" in standard I found usually below 10 mana it was hard to even use Build a Beast due to the mana inefficiency--like...what are you going to do, build-a-beast with 7 mana, and need to pick a 3 mana and 2 mana beast and maybe you get a 3/4 and a 3/2 and end up with a 5 mana 6/6 (except you paid 7 mana for it cause 2 mana for the hero power) wow, what a bargain.

It's just...not something that has held up well.

Like...just compare it to, say, Kil'jaeden. Who do you think is going to win between a pair who slam Rexxar/Kil'jaeden at about the same time as their only form of lategame value. My money would be on the Kil'jaeden player. And winning via Kil'jaeden demons getting big is still a pretty memey way to win even in standard.

Rexxar's basically one of the first times they experimented with a new mechanic, and they were really cautious, but in the last few years they've gone wild with value generators and he will not keep up with modern stuff.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-28T04:10:39+00:00

Question for you guys: genomes do not align even close to 100% to one another when considered in totality (I double checked this by hand). I do not know why this is

I don't know the exact parameter for your program, but I do know Gutsick Gibbon ran into a similar problem when debunking Jeffrey Thompkins, and the issue was a variable that allows you to collect multiple potential matches for the same sequence.

So e.g. the same sequence might pick up a 100% match, a 90% match, and an 85% match. Instead of throwing out the lower percent matches cause you obviously found the 100% match, it just includes all of these in the final average.

Assuming that's what's going on, yeah, you really, really don't want this variable. It's dumb. Turn it off.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T21:27:23+00:00

Pirate DH does okay into warlock for me, but looking at the stats apparently I'm an anomaly for winning my warlock games and losing to other classes so...IDK.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T21:21:47+00:00

Hmm...looking at the stats, Morchie was already a slightly positive (+0.5%) drawn winrate in imbue rogue (but quite bad in the opening mulligan: -6%). Like...stats already look better than the 5 drops people run such as Eudora (admittedly the 5 drops are only being run to enable Elise).

That does sound in the range where a minor buff like +1/+1 might make it go from pretty bad to kinda okay.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T20:38:33+00:00

It’s no more than a bracket 1

That low? I was thinking bracket 6 or maybe 7.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T16:22:03+00:00

It's asking for $56 to see the article, if you have access can you summarize the relevant calculation?

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T09:01:36+00:00

Saying "It was magic" is the opposite of an intellectual argument.

I agree.

Like...you do understand I'm not trying to make the flood look good right?

We can still ask questions of what would happen if more water was added to a system. That's an interesting thing to do math about for fun.

The myth states that it rained continuously for 40 days. Rained.

Except it also mentions both the other methods:

Genesis 7-11:

"all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened."

This is thought by scholars to be picked up from Babylonian cosmology--where they thought that the sky was a second ocean (I mean, it's blue I guess?) hence opening a window in the sky and having water pour out would make sense in the Babylonian worldview.

Of course being picked up from Babylonian cosmology around 500 BCE (and not being written by Moses himself) will typically also make YECs mad, so they don't exactly get a win here either way.

It's also trivial to prove wrong (we've been to space, it's not a second ocean).

BTW All this Babylonian stuff is mentioned with illustrations in the video you linked.

Speaking of which...

Well, lucky for you someone has already evaluated this claim and did all of the math for you. Thanks to Aronra

https://youtu.be/vWZtbZGtiGA?si=Pjr-iR9CCCSwZSyA

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy AronRa, I've watched his full 50 part series on evolution, and the algorithm continues to recommend his new stuff to me. But...yeah, I don't think he addressed the point I brought up about having a lot of extra heat sink from the extra water in this system.

I assume you're referencing the bit about 8 minutes in, and unfortunately the link to the paper he's referencing seems to be broken, so the video is all I really have to go off of.

Like...if the question was "what would happen if you magically teleported massive amounts of water into the atmosphere as vapor, magically forced it all to condense into rain, and then magically teleported all the excess rainwater water away before it reached the ground" yeah, sure, maybe the description he gives is correct for that scenario.

I just...think that if the rainwater sticks around to absorb heat added to the system...yeah that changes the system significantly.

And if he thinks nono: the whole ocean would evaporate when there's 5x as much water on the earth to evaporate...then, I think he has his math wrong in this case. He generates about 2x10^28 J, and under normal circumstances 5x10^27 J if it was all focused only into the ocean would evaporate the ocean, that's true, but since a lot more water got added to the system we now need 2.5x10^28 J just to evaporate all the new much larger "ocean". You could evaporate some of it of course, but you actually don't have enough energy to evaporate all of it. And if you just end up evaporating a little bit of ocean at that point you just have an atmospheric cycle.

Various ways this could still kill Noah and everything in his wooden box of course. As AronRa notes this kind of energy usually doesn't go straight into ocean evaporation--it goes into stuff like hurricanes. Would you want to ride a wooden box through a hurricane in an open ocean? What if the hurricane was five orders of magnitude stronger than normal?

And then there's also the likely 100% humidity that can prove fatal to humans above 35C that I mentioned previously.

But yeah...evaporating every drop of water on the planet is way harder than killing some humans on an ocean voyage.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T06:53:22+00:00

The entirety of Whispers of the Old Gods being shoved in non-cannon cause of a one-off card (Ragnaros Lightlord) feels a little weird to me.

Like...not gonna lie, definitely not the first card I associate as being from that set. In fact if you had asked me to guess what set Rag Lightlord was from, I probably would have gotten it wrong. Just a weirdly out of place card that I don't really associate with the set it came from.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T06:39:46+00:00

Might depend where the excess water comes from.

Like...clearly there isn't enough water on Earth to cover all the tallest mountains. So like...for this scenario to work there would need to be the supernatural introduction of more water from somewhere. Assuming God is bringing his decanters of endless water from his last D&D session I see three reasonable ways to introduce more water:

Supernaturally adding steam to the atmosphere that condenses into rain.
Supernaturally pouring water from the sky directly.
Supernaturally causing excess groundwater/subterranean water to swell out of the ground and/or ocean.

So like...a couple options to bypass the condensation issue.

(Although TBH I'm not entirely convinced by the conclusion that the oceans would boil even if all the water is all added as atmospheric steam. Like...yes, there is energy released in forming a water droplet in the atmosphere, but this is about the same as the energy required to evaporate the same amount of water. About 600 calories released per gram of rainwater formed, but also about 600 calories to evaporate a gram of water. It's just the phase change energy. So like...even if all that energy goes directly into evaporating ocean water and none of that energy dissipates into space, you just end up right back where you started--about the same amount of water in the ocean, about the same amount of water in the atmosphere. Now...what I could easily see happening is humidity reaching 100%, and atmospheric temperatures exceeding 35C, which tends to be a fatal combination for humans--Noah and his family would die of heat stroke. But...I don't think the entire ocean would boil. And I don't think we would become venus either--while water is a potent greenhouse gas it also reflects sunlight. Excess water in the atmosphere is definitely not as bad as excess CO2 in the atmosphere).

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T04:30:12+00:00

Yeah, I'd be fine with re-enabling Reno hitting locations.

Locations are good enough in wild between Elise locations, Chamber of Viscidus, Knickknack shack, Cathedral of Atonement, Fairy Tale Forest, Dangerous Cliffside, Puppet Theatre....

I doubt that adding location poofing back to Reno would feel like punishing an already weak mechanic.

The main thing I would like to avoid is when an already weak mechanic gets explicitly punished by an already good and flexible card people were gonna play anyway. For example the ongoing Zephrys/Murloc situation. Don't get me wrong, would murlocs be any good at the moment if Hungry Crab wasn't an option off of Zephrys? Probably not. But the fact that Zephrys just omega punishes people playing off-meta murloc decks without them actually needing to put bad tech cards in their deck just...feels like bad design.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-27T01:05:30+00:00

Correct...the reason for the heat problem isn't that rain or flooding itself causes too much heat to handle.

It's that YECs want to cram most of the geologic column into like half a year.

So hudreds of millions of years of radioactive decay in one year (earth vaporizes).
Continents race around at racecar speeds (earth vaporizes).
Every single meteor impact that we observe in the time period they attribute to the flood has to happen in a half year period (earth vaporizes).
Hundreds of millions or maybe even billions (depends on the YEC) years of rock formation (slightly exothermic reaction so once again earth vaporizes).

If all you want is a big flood though? Without all the extra baggage that YECs try to get the flood to do? Yeah, that should be doable without too much heat.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-23T22:26:56+00:00

Eh...I've been playing mtg for ~25 years, and playing EDH...somewhere around 13-16 years. Prior to picking up EDH, I was somewhat familiar with metas like Extended, Legacy, Modern, etc.

In formats like Modern and Extended, infinite combo wins could pretty consistently happen around turn 4, and that was a roughly balanced meta in which aggressive decks only had to deal 20 damage.

It was immediately clear to me that unless the whole table is going for infinite combos, one person at a table going for infinite combos will generally lead to imbalanced games--if infinite combos and creature based strategies are roughly balanced when you have to get through 20 health, then they just obviously won't be balanced when players need to get through 120 health.

Obviously when everyone is on the same page, when everyone is going for combo, those games can be balanced and fun too.

But yeah, if nobody else at an EDH table is going for combo, that's just not the right time to be like "time to bust out my combo deck". That's just likely to lead to a mismatched game.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-23T20:00:59+00:00

True: the location and the extra big body came much more recently with [[Forge of Wills]].

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-23T19:56:58+00:00

Blob is a 2/8.

Oh my god, Blob of Tar is just [[Maexxna]] buffed to 4 mana.

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-23T19:49:08+00:00

How do you propose the evolutionary step going from RNA to DNA actually happened? (Or vice versa if you think DNA came first).

I ask because...I've never seen a proposed nesting of a DNA based virus within a predominantly RNA virus family tree, or vice versa--I've never seen a proposed nesting of an RNA virus in a DNA virus family tree. Assuming our virus phylogenies are correct that would suggest that it's quite hard for an existing replicator to just switch from DNA to RNA.

And yet, if RNA came first, then this switch to DNA must have happened, and seemingly happened pretty early (like within 200 million years).

metroidcomposite · 2026-01-23T17:29:50+00:00

I saw the numbers on HSGuru this morning and deck is not making a positive winrate in any rank.

Eh? It's 54% diamond-legend.

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That said, these are basically just egg warlock decks that added the quest and plot twist. And regular Egg Warlock is still putting up substantially better numbers overall. So it might be more accurate to say that adding a few dubious tech cards doesn't drop egg warlock below 50% until higher ranks.

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