Hi, friends!
Do you have some detail from history or geology or paleontology or wherever that you always just were like “I call bullshit” – for example any time Elon Musk pretends to have brain cells?
For me, I have such doubts about all the assumptions with the Shanidar Caves and Neanderthal remains. It’s not that I don’t think Neanderthals had language and were smart etc, but I have such doubts about how in a cave the evidence of pollen with remains means oh must have been intentional burials with spiritual significance. Anthropology (which includes archaeology and human paleontology) in general is bad about that – when in doubt if there’s something that makes no sense, welp must be “ritual.” So you know, “flower burials.”
I just look at the details from the Shanidar burials and go ohh, they were gathering plants to use as mats to sleep on and then the fucking cave entrance they used collapsed and they died.
i have doubts about all food
like i cannot wrap my head around how many village idiots we must have killed figuring out which berries are poisenous
and you know….i’d also like to know who found out potatos are edible
and id really like to know….who thought it was a smart idea to smoke a plant
these are all bafflingly wierd ideas to me
and i say that as a person currently doing all the shit they started
At one point, taste was a step in the scientific method.
Weird it took them so long to take it out.
Yep, tasting pee to diagnose diabetes.
All things are edible.
Some things more than once!
uhh…im not sure about this
time for bed i guess…. nii nii me lovelys
The theory that early human ancestors hunted by chasing big prey for miles until the animals were exhausted and that’s how humans became bipedal sweat cooled endurance runners is really dumb.
It got a ton of traction in the press and among runners, but it has essentially no evidence to support it. The guy who came up with it was arguing that early humans couldn’t have used weapons to hunt before stone spear points because it was too risky, which he only backed up by citing injury rates anong rodeo clowns.
i dissagree with you
not on the long runners part…i think its safe to say most of us arent
we can walk forever and track tho
doesnt really matter how far and fast you go if the chasing party has more fuel
Seeing the tracks of a limping animal by a waterhole and going off to find where it ended up is pretty reasonable. Thinking early human ancestors ran after big healthy animals until they collapsed, which is what the theory says, is screwy.
The most interesting hypothesis I read about bipedalism was the aquatic hypothesis. I’m poorly summarizing but the jist was hey there’s a lot of wading occurring and it’s easier to start moving upright when wading because you have more reach if you’re bipedal, plus the bouyancy helps with the posture. And that we’re basically hairless compared to the other great apes.
I don’t know that I believe it, but it’s more plausible than some other theories.
There’s always some idiot who tries to be the contrarian.
The minor glitches I know from history…
1) Some RW historian in the early 2000s tried to give credit for the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal to an Admiral who not only fucked up the formation of his ships and refused to fire because he wasn’t sure of the location of his ships (but his staff officers did) and who died in the first minutes of the melee so had no actual role outside of getting the Medal of Honor posthumously.
2) The 28th Infantry Division (Penn) was nicknamed the bucket of blood because of the number of casualties they suffered at the Hertgen Forrest and Battle of the Bulge not for the Germans they killed. Their official website claims it was because of the damage they did to the Germans… History says otherwise.
3) The Apple TV series Masters of the Air was about the bloody 100th Bomb Group. Some say it earned that nickname because of the number of losses it took. Some say it was because a bomb crew in a damaged B-17 tried to surrender then changed their mind and shot down 3 Messerschmitts and forever earned the eternal hatred of the Luftwaffe who took great pleasure in shooting down any B-17 with a Square D symbol.
Much like how Canadian troops took almost no SS prisoners after the massacre of Canadian POWs in Normandy became common knowledge. Atrocity begat atrocity.
The Ken Burns Civil War series has not aged well at all.
He handed over an enormous chunk of it to Shelby Foote who turned the Confederacy into some kind of bothsides fantasy world. I think it’s one of the more influential sources of ideas that expanded in the 1990s — “division” in the abstract is the problem, history is about putting equal blame on both sides, and we can all come together if we just try a little harder to find middle ground.
It’s too bad because in fits and starts it says some good things. But every time it let’s ol’ Shelby do his aw shucks act about Bobby Lee (and it does it a whole lot) it drowned out the genuine, other level evil of the South.
I was looking for the last escaped zebra on our trip through where he escaped but I’m having some questions if this might be fake?
I think Bigfoot would be friends with an escaped zebra. Seems legit to me.
You are probably right, I shouldn’t have questioned that one. I just didn’t s
Didn’t see them at any of the wineries.
uhhhh…huh?
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/98900/did-you-guys-know-that-splinter-and-jezebel-are-back-from-the-dead
Jez has been back up for a couple months and last I saw the same org was “planning to” buy Splinter (which would kill off the old site). You can’t comment unless you subscribe and the writing is just as garbage as it had been at the last incarnation at Jezebel. The comments were the whole point in the end. So now there is no point.
ah…..well…it was fun having the glimmer of hope for a sec
but tbh….. im not sure i’d bother if it was good either….
found myself having very little patience for randos on the interwebs nowadays…..i has a trusted little group here and on oppo….and for the time being the rest can sod off