It is in one sense and isn’t in another. Someone saying “basic biology” is generally ignorant of the wide world of biology out there, either through lack of exposure or purposefully so.

The truth is that biology’s definitions are all humans’ ways of dividing up phenomena into neat little categories, but nature just exists as it is and doesn’t need to follow our linguistic rules.

For every definition we come up with, there are invariably multiple exceptions that don’t cleanly fit, because that’s just not how nature works. Even basic definitions like “sex,” “species,” and “life” itself start to get shaky the moment we try to eliminate all the exceptions.

The truth is that for humans there is no single, universally accepted definition of sex or gender. And even attempts to reduce them to something tangentially related like genotype quickly fall apart when you start looking at the exceptions. The person who says that there being two human sexes (usually to the exclusion of gender identity) is “basic biology” is not only categorically wrong, but they’re either ignorant of or ignoring the granularity of our own species. The whole of human sex and gender identity cannot be neatly summed up as “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” from Kindergarten Cop.

So are the slugs relevant? I would say yes, because if you’re not aware of the variation in nature on the obvious macro scale you have no prayer of appreciating it on the more subtle micro scale.

But it’s not, though. It’s the watered down children’s version of biology people half remember from elementary school. It’s not actual human biology.

Epictetus. “Some things are up to us and some are not up to us.”

https://lemmyverse.net/communities

Yep, back in the 90s they were in some places. My local supermarket had one like this, except without the annoying ad on the left side.

That wasn’t so much a “fact” told in school as it was a prediction, and it was true for them. Some people carried pocket calculators, but most people didn’t. Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts, but most didn’t.

Failing to predict society’s norms in 20 years isn’t the same as teaching a false fact.

Same. I’m playing GTA San Andreas on mobile (through Netflix if you interested) and while the game holds up, all the minigames suck ass. I’m likely not going to complete a single one. Maybe I’ll cave and do burglaries for infinite sprint, but probably not.

A knockoff iPhone charger from China. I plugged it into my computer and it literally caught fire.

No, they have an atypical phenotype for their chromosome.

He’s referring to medical conditions where XY people are born female or XX people are born male.

Thank you so much for responding. I sincerely hope you find what you are searching for.

Secure fax is encrypted: it’s sent via https.

How do you reconcile that with your discomfort about much of your connection to religion being circumstantial? Isn’t that very different than what you just told me?

After all, the post you just gave me is the practiced rhetoric of a firm believer. You were able to fall back into it quite easily, but does it accurately reflect how you really feel? Do you still feel this tie to Christ and that you are being held to this divine mandate given that you were saying you (your faith?) was at a low point a couple posts earlier?

Why is it good that it makes you uncomfortable? And I’ll go a step further and ask whether all discomfort regarding religion is good. For example, was your chaplain saying you should be uncomfortable because you’re not sure if it’s rooted in truth, or were they saying you should be going out of your comfort zone and challenging yourself to do more and/or expressing your faith in new ways? If so, are the two equivalent?

I’m asking in genuine curiosity: I grew up Catholic, and never felt much of a community motivation for my religion. Once I got to college, I mostly stopped going to church, with occasional bursts where I’d decide to go for a month or so. So going to church dried up before my faith did for me, and I don’t really understand going in the absence of faith.

I hung on as an agnostic theist for years, though lately I think I’ve been more of an agnostic atheist. I agree with your sentiment on God existence not being predicated on belief, but have also reached the conclusion that if I need belief to accept something as true, it probably isn’t.

Does it bother you that only one of those criteria is actually tied to faith in a god’s existence?

You know, I haven’t actually asked them what it is they spray. All I know is almost everyone in my neighborhood does it, then waters their lawn constantly and mows short twice per week. And like 1/3 of them burn their leaves every fall and triggers the hell out of my asthma and allergies.

Which is silly because I live in the Midwest: grass doesn’t need any help to grow here. I mow a little longer every week or two in the spring and every 2-3 weeks in the summer and my lawn looks lush with 1/3 of the effort and not pouring a bunch of crap on it. And my trimmings decay just fine without sending a plume of smoke to my neighbors.

Spray shit on it to kill the dandelions.

The sprays really kill them. The fireflies will not cross into my neighbors’ lawns, where they treat their grass.

This zero-cost licensing model translates to significant savings

You don’t say?

I would not seek for one to exist by virtue of me wanting it to exist, but would rather have it exist if it does and not if it doesn’t.