Posts

gray17, 7 days ago to random

from Bruce Bagemihl PhD, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity (1999)

In fact, the percentage is probably even higher than this, when we consider how easy it is for common behaviors to be missed during even the most detailed of study. A caveat of any scientific endeavor, particularly biology, is that much remains to be learned and observed, and many secrets await discovery—and this is especially true where sexual behavior is concerned. Nocturnal or tree-dwelling habits, elusiveness, habitat inaccessibility, small size, and problems in identifying individual animals are just some of the factors that make field observations of sexuality in many species exceedingly difficult. Consider heterosexual mating, a behavior that is known to occur in all mammals and birds (and most other animals), usually with great regularity. Yet in many species this activity has never been seen: “Despite literally thousands of hours of observations made by biologists over many years in the West Indies, Hawaii, and elsewhere, actual copulation in humpback whales has yet to be observed.” Lucifer hummingbirds, northern rough-winged swallows, black-and-white warblers, red-tailed tropic birds, and several species of cranes (such as wattled and Siberian cranes) are just a handful of the birds in which heterosexual mating has never been recorded. In some cases, opposite-sex mating has been observed, but only a handful of times at most: in magnificent hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks,
in magnificent hummingbirds and black-headed grosbeaks, for example—the latter a common North American bird—copulation between males and females has only been seen once during the entire history of the scientific study of these species. Heterosexual copulation in Victoria’s Riflebirds was not documented until the mid-1990s (and then only several times), even though the species has been known to Western science for nearly a century and a half. During a ten-year study of Cheetahs, no opposite-sex matings were seen over the course of 5,000 hours of observation, and copulation has only been observed a total of five times in the wild during the entire scientific study of this animal. Similar patterns are characteristic of other species: in the akepa (a Hawaiian finch), only five copulations were witnessed during five years of study, only five heterosexual matings were seen in a four-year study of Spotted Hyenas, and only three matings in a three-year study of Agile Wallabies. Nests and eggs of many birds such as swallows and birds of paradise have yet to be discovered, while the first nest of the marbled murrelet was found in 1959, more than 170 years after discovery of the species by Western science.
...new revelations about heterosexual behavior are being made all the time: female initiation of mating activity in Orang-utans ... was not documented until 1980 in spite of nearly 22,000 hours of observation over the preceding 20 years (and prior extensive field studies often failed to report any heterosexual copulations). As recently as 1996, the existence of polygamous trios in the tanga’eo or Mangaia kingfisher (of the Cook Islands near New Zealand) were uncovered for the first time, and the full extent of heterosexual mating by Common Chimpanzees with animals outside their group was not understood until 1997. Multiple heterosexual matings by female Harbor Seals were not verified until 1998; even then, the behavior was never directly observed during three years of study (including continuous, 24-hour videotape surveillance of captive animals over an entire breeding season), and had to be verified indirectly through DNA testing. If direct observation by scientists were used as the sole criterion for the existence of a behavior, we would have to conclude that many species never engage in heterosexuality (or in certain forms of heterosexuality)—yet we know this cannot be true. So the fact that homosexuality has not been seen in many animals does not necessarily mean that it is absent in those species—only that it has yet to be observed. Ironically, many species in which heterosexuality has rarely or never been observed are ones in which homosexual activity has been recorded

gray17, 8 days ago to random

I wonder how many of the "I might not vote for him now" are less, "I wasn't sure before, but now it seems like he really is a criminal", and more, "voting for a felon is embarrassing (but I might do it anyway (and having a felon for a president is embarrassing, but when he does regain the throne, we can beat up anyone that laughs at me)), I mean, of course I won't vote for him"

gray17, 13 days ago to random

um, yeah, thanks google

gray17, 19 days ago to random

Bye!

gray17, 21 days ago to random

...designing a keyboard layout where a qwerty user typing "ls -la" will execute "rm -rf"

gray17, 22 days ago to random

Thank you for posting. Your posts are very important to us. All our wolves are currently awooing. Please remain online. Your posts will be sniffed in the order they appear on the timeline

gray17, 24 days ago to random

uh, somehow managed to chip the screen of my phone when I chewed on it. doesn't anyone chew-test their products any more?

gray17, 25 days ago to random

(the humans came to regret forgetting to ask the AI if it wanted to be demoed)

gray17, 25 days ago to random

Founded in 2031, MORGN was the first Frictionless Autonomous Enterprise, a corporation whose employees are entirely AI constructs devoted to implementing the desires of the CEO. Often, the CEO is the sole human involved.

Since the CEO's view of their corporation is supplied by the AI employees, the world of the FAE is somewhat detached from the ordinary human world. Outside visitors are often fascinated and disoriented. Making deals with the FAE has benefits, but also many perils.

gray17, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

... If a hive mind like the Borg became a citizen in time for the election, would they have one vote or a billion votes? Maybe each unit has to become a citizen individually? Assume that I'm a citizen, I've married the Borg, and I gave birth to twin Borglets who are a single mind and are now legal age to vote. Also, each Borglet's left eye can detach and move independently on spider-like legs. Erica's eye is studying Lithuanian art history and wants us to call him Benas. Does he get to vote?

gray17, 1 month ago to random

audiobooks are annoyingly difficult to search. I wish they came with a transcript. I can also read the transcript faster than the narrator can talk. I just need an audio UI for the car so I can drive while reading audiobook transcripts

gray17, 1 month ago to random

... I feel like the theme of this decade was set by the Four Seasons Total Landscaping incident in 2020. Are we sure the press conference location wasn't chosen by an LLM? GPT-3 was released earlier that year

gray17, 1 month ago to random

today I wondered, can I get Bing (dall-e 3) to generate a sexy picture of an anthropomorphic toaster?

verdict: it's completely unable to generate a normal picture of a sideways toaster. "toaster lying on its side" and similar prompts just produced upright toasters, sometimes with explosions or other oddities.

"sideways toaster fallen over and lying on its side, pointing its slots at the viewer" produced boxy alien machines posed in weird angles, sometimes with toast attached to a side

gray17, 1 month ago to random

wondered this morning about asymmetry of "puppy" and "kitten" in mastodon, but not sure how to get good data. search on mastodon.social as first approximation:

• accounts matching "puppy" seem mostly humans with some puppy identity
• accounts matching "kitten" are more evenly split, less than half are humans with some kitten identity
• posts matching "puppy" are dominated by Kristi Noem right now, need to search some other time
• posts matching "kitten" are almost all about actual cats

gray17, 1 month ago to random

I've come to realize that all social networks that exist today are flawed in various ways, and they seem to be unfixable. So I've decided to make a new social network, for people who don't like social networks. You're it. Hi. wanders off