Mostly good article about a really neat publication describing some really good fossils of individuals of Lystrosaurus. But I’m a stickler for accuracy so I’m going to raise some disagreements. All of them arise out of the belief that the Gizmodo audience is smart enough to deserve accurate science writing. :-)

I don’t…

Yes.

Platypuses aren’t marsupials. They’re monotremes. They’re as different from marsupials as they are from us placentals.

Good summary. Marsupials are actually fairly abundeant in South America, however. They just aren’t very big or diverse.

Yeah if I wanted to look at a digital picture of a celestial object, I can already do that now and save two and a half grand.

It’s not necessarily accurate to say placental mammals outcompeted them. It’s very tempting to say it, since they certainly outnumber them. Marsupials are very rare outside of Australia and New Zealand. But we need to be careful about the assumptions we make based on apparent winners in what looks to our human eyes…

This misses the entire point though. Sure those words are not “incorrect” descriptions.. but  ‘primitive’ and ‘weird/bizarre’ have connotations outside of their literal dictionary definitions - connotations that have a tremendous impact on how we frame our relationships to these species.

“all I can think is: but is it flat, though?”

“It’s so badass...”

No I’m not?

I won’t. Unless every single person I know comes up to me and tells me what an amazing film it is and how they turned the plot around completely, I won’t. I still have only ever seen one Jurassic Park film. People only saw Avatar because everybody told everybody how pretty it was in 3D. That novelty is gone. I will be…

Fuck these companies. This is pure P.R. window dressing. After decades lavishing campaign donations on Republicans in exchange for tax breaks now they want to come in and pretend they’re on the right side of history. Fuck these companies. 

Let's make something abundantly clear. At the end of the day, the objective is to keep people ignorant and trapped in poverty for longer, all so those in power can stay that way indefinitely. 

Fuck you Christians.

You know, these corporations could do us one better and stop supporting the GOP. That would do a lot more to help the situation because, I can assure you, the states where abortion is illegal will be passing laws allowing them to prosecute women upon their return for leaving the state to get an abortion. And when the…

Unfortunately, it turns into a half-assed rescue mission (a poor man’s Mission Impossible) and trying to stop a comically megalomaniacal head of an evil company (who strangely resembles Tim Cook). And then it devolves into the usual JP/JW shtick of dinosaurs gone wild.

Because you only rule shit “in” when there’s some evidence for it.

FWIW, Westinghouse is going to build this:

**preps bait and then casts line**