For example, theres this sea slug that I found out eats algae, which is normally exactly what you think is usual for an underwater marine animal, but guess what?
IT USES THE CHLOROPLASTS FROM THE ALGAE AND THEN GAINS THE ABILITY TO USE PHOTOSYNTHESIS AS A SLUG VIA ABSORBING PLANTS
I remember reading that there are likely still hundreds of scientific research facilities, archives and testing sites in and around Russia and other former Soviet countries that were unfortunately and rapidly shut down or abandoned because of the capitalist coup in 1991.
Imagine all the possible unrealized or half-finished pieces of technology, data or breakthroughs that might be achieved, just sitting in abandoned buildings waiting to be found.
I work with psychotic people and they sometimes claim they can hallucinate in ways that don’t make sense to us. Like, they can hear voices in their belly as if they have a functioning ear there. It’s really interesting to see.
I did damage to my mental with bad psychedelics and I was functionally schizophrenic for one month. I had all the symptoms. I had to slowly “train” myself to overcome them, it took years and I’m 99% back to normal.
But yeah. I saw out of my ears once. Like it was like my vision was sucked out of my ears from both sides and flared out like a trumpet. With a horrible stretching sensation of my mind.
There was another time where it felt like my mind was being assaulted by what I could only describe as “vibratory hell waves” (aka rushing tinnitus as opposed to ringing tinnitus).
Hearing things was scary. It was like…like a real sound, but I could tell something was off. A whisper in the curtains that sounded fundamentally wrong. A yelp that sounded like the sound was stretched out, flipped, shrunk back, and pitched up and down in lightning fast oscillation. But I like…FELT it to. In my bones.
Sorry if this is rough to read, I don’t know what work you do but I know that shit is taxing.
Researchers think the reason the voices sound weird is because the voices seem to come from a part of the brain that is not directly involved in forming language and speech. So most of the times the things the voices say is very short and without much grammar because complex language and grammar is formed in another part of the brain.
The best analogy I heard was when someone compared it to a library where the librarian brings books in request, with books being words. In a psychoses the librarian brings you books but nobody asked for them, but they come up regardless.
Wow, thanks for the info!
This goes perfectly with my experience. I would often hear just sounds or one or two words. If I had to guess I would guess it was some distorted hybrid of several memories as it didn’t sound “original” it sounded like what an AI that was fed my memories would guess would be something that someone I know would say etc. To build on that analogy I would add is it’s like the librarian is being told to make dinner and the chef is being told to bring you books.
Ugh, man this shit is icky to think about. The psychedelics definitely caused me to form neural connections that I wasn’t supposed to. I could feel my organs, my digestion, and my blood flow until I crimestopped it enough that the neurons withered but I know if I invested in the pathways it would light up again like it was yesterday. Many other similar things besides language or body awareness. I would also say that it definitely opened up perspectives that felt “forbidden” and, after slowly recovering from the initial shock and the cognitive dissonance, contributed to wisdom.
Not trying to ramble lol but damn this shit…
Again, thank you so much for the info, very interesting.
The largest organism is not the Blue Whale, but this thing called a mycelium somewhere in a mountain range in Oregon. It’s basically a web that connects mushrooms along with themselves and other organisms in the surrounding.
Mycelium can trade nutrients with trees/ plants and can “punish” them if they don’t find the trade beneficial enough (IIRC about the study) :O
I’ve been obsessed with mycelium for quite a while because I did not know fungus could be this interesting but holy shit it is.
The 1993 Super Mario Bros movie was a documentary.
what
White-Throated Sparrows functionally have four sexes. They have tan-stripe male, white-stripe male, tan-stripe female, and white-stripe female. The white-striped sexes are promiscuous, defensive over their territory, and good singers, while tan-stripe sexes are loyal, quiet, and good parents. Broods with white-white or tan-tan parents tend to fail.
The mutation that causes white-stripe forms creates a portion of chromosome that can’t swap genetic material with unmutated genes, which keeps the forms from blending back together. The mutation is also passed on about 50% of the time. Because of that, the white-tan divide can function as a sex divide.
This is actually super weird because while fish, amphibians, and reptiles love to get weird with reproduction, birds and mammals are pretty vanilla about it. I find the fact that a rather derived bird (which are highly derived themselves!) found a way to get funky about sex super cool.
Can you tell I’m passionate about birds?
Its always great to be passionate about nature and its incredible biodiversity!
I’m just leaving this thing here
When food is abundant, these slime molds exist as single-celled organisms. When food is in short supply, many of these single-celled organisms will congregate and start moving as a single body. In this state they are sensitive to airborne chemicals and can detect food sources. They can readily change the shape and function of parts, and may form stalks that produce fruiting bodies, releasing countless spores, light enough to be carried on the wind or hitch a ride on passing animals
some species may reach sizes up to several square metres and masses up to 20 kilograms
out of the way dolphins, new candidate for the next intelligent creature to establish socialism just dropped.
Obsessed with this
I learned about this through Dictyostelium. Here is a video
According to anthropic principle, my consciousness cannot die.
Consciousness is bound to the brain (which is shown e.g. by the fact that I can black out and my consciousness just skips over this period of time), therefore my brain cannot die either.
Which means that in the following 50-100 years immortality will be invented, or instituted through some other means.
Now with all the people who has died before, this seeming contradiction is resolved with the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Their minds may still live in “parallel” universes.
Or maybe I’ll just reboot back to my birth moment. Or maybe reincarnation is a thing. Then maybe we’re all just the same consciousness being consequently rebooted into every new brain in an infinite loop.
Seems more spiritual than actual science to me, but I hope this is the case, since I also dream of immortality…
But hey, wanna hear some Komm Susser Todd for the last phrase?
Sorry, but I’m pretty sure when you die, you die.
This is like saying that programs don’t die because they continue to function before and after closing your laptop. So therefore, your laptop cannot die either. No offense, but this makes 0 sense.
As much as I’d love to be functionally immortal, I highly doubt that the technology and scientific backing for it will be invented and solidified before capitalism is overthrown, and I won’t hold my breath that I’ll be able to “live forever” one day, and I’m trying to make peace with the fact that I will likely die before immortality is possible.
I like the Everett principle interpretation of consciousness, but I’m first and foremost an analytically-minded strict scientifically based person, and I think that the idea of consciousness persisting is merely wishful thinking and not exclusively indicated by anything other than human philosophy, perception and anthropocentric points of view, and a form of psychological death denial.
I’d love to be proven wrong though.
I’m basing this on David Deutsch’s “Fabric of Reality”. One thing he does is he combines the concept of time and “parallelity” of universes in a single entity: the multiverse is a bunch of frames (a 3d snapshots of a universe in a single moment), and time is just a select sequence of frames within the multiverse. He barely touches the concept of consciousness though, most of these are just my extrapolations.
In physics, he bases his reasoning on quantum mechanics, which doesn’t really specify anything strictly about time, like e.g. General Relativity does. It seems natural to me to define time as a subjective perception of “subsequent” frames of a multiverse by a consciousness though. Which is equivalent to defining a consciousness as a sequence of perceived frames of a multiverse, connecting the concept of consciousness to physics.
With this definition, there is complete freedom in hypothesizing about the laws of
consciousnesssequencing of the frames to be perceived, but all in all the proof of immortality lies in anthropic principle. I.e. if death is actually final, I can never possibly know that, assuming there is no breakthrough in scientific understanding of consciousness. This can be interpreted as that the theory of death being final is unproofable, until the said breakthrough happens.It’s not necessarily “true” immortality though, the memory can get completely wiped, and you’ll have no idea that you’ve been someone before, unless someone tells you.
What multiverse interpretation gives to it is this: if immortality of my consciousness can physically be achieved, say, by year 2100, it is achieved in one of the universes by 2100 (this is the definition of “physically achievable”). Which is a theoretical explanation of inevitable immortality, which was lacking without multiverse interpretation. And now anthropic principle goes from “well, if you actually die, you won’t notice this, so why care?” to “well, if there is a 0.0000000000001% of you never dying, you’re definitely never dying”.
The same with “true” immortality: If there is a 0.00000001% of you never dying while also keeping your identity via memories, you’re definitely never dying and keep your identity via memories.
I understand that, I still think its a bit too much metaphysical woo without evidence, and it wouldn’t be “truly” you so to speak.
Ants, bees and some other related species are haplodiploid.
I did not know that was the name for this. This has made so many unanswered questions make sense for me.
Iron skinned snails that live inside sea volcanoes.
This post is 2 years but old but only about 1% of all the species of animals and plants that ever lived have been found.
thats fuckin nuts
Yo that’s some like Kirby shit right theree
I know right? AND THEY DO IT WITH POISON TOO ITS INSANE!
What beautiful, deadly sluggers 🥺
