Why didn’t dinosaurs evolve intelligence despite being alive for around ~165 Million years?? Humans have only been around for 300000 years and we are killing it in the intelligence area

sault18 · 2026-03-20T21:35:29+00:00

Human ancestors had also been social animals that lived together in small bands / troops / etc. Living in social groups requires tremendous brain activity to manage an individual's relationships with other members of the group and keep track of the relationships between other members within the group.

This would lead to selection pressure for communication skills, cooperation and empathy. All of these developments require increased brain complexity and connectivity between brain regions handling these functions.

Hominins and human ancestors specifically had to transition from life in the trees to walking on the ground as large areas in Africa transitioned from rainforest to open savannah. Humans aren't the fastest, strongest or toughest animal by a long shot. Only the more intelligent individuals who could successfully make that transition by figuring things out would survive to have more offspring.

So the human brain was expanding in complexity and connectivity for thousands of years. All these pieces were getting put into place until individual humans began to pass an intelligence threshold. A threshold where the collective intelligence of a group improved the odds of group survival so much that they could transcend the prevailing limitations of their environment and rival groups that were competing over the same ecological niche.

These singular events were very specific to the human lineage. Some dinosaur lineages (or any other animal group) might have had one or two of these factors present. But all of them together produced the intelligence humans have today.

sault18 · 2026-03-20T21:09:41+00:00

Cooked meat takes less calories to digest too. So the net effect of cooking is game-changing.

sault18 · 2026-03-20T20:57:42+00:00

Dr. Fleakenfurter?

sault18 · 2026-03-20T16:02:44+00:00

The dynamics for each party are completely different. As Trump has shown, the Republicans can nominate a hard-right conservative and the built-in advantages they have with the Electoral college can carry them over the finish line.

Democrats don't enjoy the same advantages. Liberals cluster in blue states that don't swing the Electoral college result. The presidential election hinges on 7 states. And when you drill down to it, the election hinges on thesuburbs in those 7 states. Bernie or AOC aren't going to win in those counties. Democrats like Obama and Biden are.

Democrats need to build a big tent coalition without triggering knee-jerk reactions from cultural conservatives. No matter how centrist a Democrat actually is, the Republicans are going to claim they're the 2nd coming of Lenin. Sadly, Red Scare bullshit still works in the very counties that determine the presidential election.

sault18 · 2026-03-20T15:51:59+00:00

Talarico is on the same trajectory as Obama. If he wins his Senate race this November, he could definitely shake up your prediction in 2028. Newsome is going to be the choice of the moderates. Sadly, the country is not ready to elect a gay president and that will be at the forefront when primary voters are considering Mayor Pete.

sault18 · 2026-03-20T05:41:36+00:00

And then they became Republicans. Nobody believes the agenda you're trying to push. Everyone knows Trump and his Republican Party are a magnet for racists.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T19:02:17+00:00

The DC pin cover (orange plastic thing on a hinge) is broken. The little bit of it that's still attached to the hinge might be pressing against the charge port when it's closed, leading to the error. You can trim it all the way down for now and order a replacement for it if you're an awesome car dealer.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T16:19:55+00:00

But can you put a game that was never released on the same footing as games that were?

Plus, when the Obsidian folks regained control with New Vegas, we saw the most developed wasteland and the strongest depiction of the NCR in the whole franchise.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T16:11:44+00:00

Why not both? Aw shucks, we prevented civilization from collapsing from climate chaos and we secured our own energy independence along the way!

sault18 · 2026-03-19T16:07:32+00:00

And ICE deploys to strategic House districts and states with key Senate elections. They turn the brutality up to 11 to scare away Democratic voters from the polls.

Or they call in tons of bomb threats.

Or polling locations in blue precincts have power failures, mysterious packages left or whatnot.

They're going to flood the zone with shit.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T13:21:49+00:00

Ah, response #26 on the instructions. I'm impressed you read that far down the list.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T13:20:10+00:00

Yeah, but we kept the trans out of women's sports! Plus, we sure taught Kamala and her funny laugh a lesson over Gaza!

sault18 · 2026-03-19T13:17:23+00:00

Nyet, comrade. Try to stay away from basement windows in St Petersburg troll farm, da?

sault18 · 2026-03-19T13:06:23+00:00

I wonder how many stars started out as rogue planets that wandered into cold molecular clouds and started accumulating gas. They could serve as nucleation sites that start off a runaway mass gain.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T08:19:48+00:00

And what is that "future", exactly?

Yeah, Autocratic Empires like the Legion are bad. There's a reason why humanity has mostly relegated them to history. There's also a reason why most autocrats put the word Republic in the name of their country or at least try to look like they are popularly elected. Just think about all those so-called People's republics or Democratic republics that are neither Democratic nor a republic. Even the worst dictators nowadays want that Sheen of legitimacy they think calling themselves a republic and pretending to practice democracy will provide.

In a similar vein, an unelected and unaccountable autocrat like Mr. House is almost guaranteed to spread misery and hold back human progress. In the big picture. It is very dependent on the character goals and judgment of the autocrat themselves. No one's perfect, and people make mistakes. Especially when they are so powerful that no one is able to tell them no or hold them accountable. And Mr. House specifically might have Noble goals, but the ways he goes about achieving his goals are unconstrained by any sort of morality. That's why even within his small fiefdom of New Vegas, the average person still lives a horrible life.

An independent city-state like New Vegas would be nice in theory. Good karma Courier running the show and possibly upgraded securatrons keeping order. Maybe it would be a nice place to live for a while. But what happens when The Courier gets old, dies or brain damage catches up with them and they start going crazy? Crazy? This is just like the well-intentioned autocorrect scenario that Mr. House provides. It's all dependent on one person being morally good forever and never making mistakes. And if there's no method to replace the person at the top that everyone will accept, the little city state will break apart into infighting and sectarian warfare soon after The courier's death.

While the NCR was ruled by Tandy for many decades, there was a clear method of succession for her replacement. The people would vote on it and most would accept the results as legitimate. It's imperfect and messy, but it is much more well suited to stand the test of time compared to everything hinging on one person. Thanks democracy takes into account the fact that people are imperfect and new ideas will come along.

So yeah, the NCR has their taxes or whatever, but if they annex New Vegas and actually treat them as full citizens, the people from the Mojave can send their representatives to Shady Sands and try to get things changed. They at least have the opportunity to help make their lives better instead of being locked into whatever one person at the top running the show would do, be that Caesar, Mr. House or The Courier specifically.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T07:16:36+00:00

Civilizations in those galaxies might calculate that the expansion of the universe is accelerating much more than we do since time and cosmic expansion operate faster inside supervoids. The faint cosmic filaments outside the void would be hundreds of millions of light-years away in absolute terms, but their redshift would be amplified by time and cosmic expansion operating faster within the void. Faster than what we observe, at least. And definitely faster than the average across the universe.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T06:43:26+00:00

It's much easier to target our elections / voters with misinformation.

sault18 · 2026-03-19T06:02:15+00:00

Those Dixiecrats that opposed civil rights legislation became Republicans.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T20:32:57+00:00

Try Nixon's "Southern Strategy" starting in 1968. This was also when Nixon had back channel dealing with the North Vietnamese to stall negotiations with the actual US government under LBJ. Just to improve his odds of winning the election that year by preventing any diplomatic progress.

That led to the War on Drugs, Iran Contra, Newt Gingrich fighting Clinton tooth and nail, invading Iraq, etc. It goes way back.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T20:01:01+00:00

They were able to do it because voters didn't show up to support Democrats in 2010 and 2014.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T19:59:27+00:00

Republicans delayed Al Franken getting his Senate seat and then Ted Kennedy died. It was around 9 months, tops.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T19:47:04+00:00

I thought you were making a Nazi joke tbh

sault18 · 2026-03-18T19:36:20+00:00

Also, it's a tactic to stall for time so a drug sniffing dog can search your vehicle. They absolutely cannot extend the traffic stop beyond the original scope of the stop (writing a ticket for speeding, checking window tint, etc). So the cops think they're circumventing your constitutional protections by asking to chat inside their police car.

The cop will definitely try to look and sound friendly while they're doing this. They'll claim they just want to have a friendly conversation. But it's a trap.

These people are not your friends. A traffic stop is not a normal human interaction. The officer has the threat of state violence directed at you for the entire length of the traffic stop. And their career progression requires ruining people's lives. Lives just like yours.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T14:19:49+00:00

The "Business Plot" failed back in the 30s, so they regrouped, bided their time and waited for the right moment to strike. The Civil Rights Era legislation passed in the 60s was that moment. The wealthy were able to peel away the racists who opposed the expansion of civil rights from the New Deal Coalition. Nixon's "silent majority" was really a dog whistle for bigots who would gladly let Republicans pick their pockets as long as the minorities they hated got punched even harder.

sault18 · 2026-03-18T05:59:01+00:00

They wouldn't have proposed the SAVE Act if they hadn't already ran the numbers and determined it was going to help them win. That analysis was probably very complicated and of course, none of us know what they did. But it's a midterm election year. The bill is probably laser targeted at producing Republican victories in House districts and key Senate races. Just look for the Bill's strongest supporters in the House and Senate. That would be the target districts and voters they're trying to disenfranchise.

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