This, and cultural diffusion is a normal part of human society. It has been for countless thousands of years.

I understand why cultural appropriation can be problematic but the fact remains that the usual mode of cultural diffusion has been, “that’s really cool. I wanna have that too”

It’s not a zero sum game because there isn’t some finite limit. By wearing a kimono or whatever you aren’t taking someone else’s right to wear one away from them.

N1 had 30 engines on the first stage

It was partially staged. The main benefit of staging is dropping dry mass during the burn, and the Atlas I dropped engines

The Panama Canal, obviously

It’s a joke, it’s not meant to be serious philosophical commentary.

That said, I find your comment a bit funny because Socrates’ dialectical method was largely a result of his objection to sophistry. Note that he rarely makes a statement himself, merely challenges those who use oratory techniques to support their claims to know the truth

You don’t need a sense of numbers, in the abstract mathematical way humans use, to count.

Maybe a human child can’t count to 1000 but they could be taught to put a BB inside a jar every step they take. Then they can take a BB back out of the jar at every step on the way back. When the jar is empty, they’re near home. Even if they can’t count at all, they can keep track of thousands of steps this way given enough attention span and stamina.

Then, just imagine, instead of a BB’s in a jar it’s some chemical signal in the brain.

I have a parrot and she loves peppers. I have given her super hots a few times, like Carolina reaper etc, and it’s hilarious until you realize how messy she is. The entire vicinity becomes a straight up biohazard by the time she is done.

That’s what they’re famous for. However, they can catch prey like songbirds by simply being faster and more agile than the quarry, chasing them down in horizontal flight. Some journal articles credit it with a horizontal top speed in the 90 mph range.

Really depends on the individual birds in question IMO. A red tailed hawk for example is really best optimized for prey on the ground like rabbits. On the other hand, a peregrine falcon is optimized for aerial prey and they eat everything from hummingbirds to geese

This is some pretty weird and lowkey racist exposition on humanity.

Getting “racism” from that post is a REAL stretch. It’s not even weird, agriculture and mechanization are widely considered good things for humanity as a whole

Humankind isn’t a single unified thing. Individual cultures have their own modes of subsistence and transportation that are unique to specific cultural needs.

ANY group of humans beyond the individual is purely just a social construct and classing humans into a single group is no less sensible than grouping people by culture, family, tribe, country etc.

It’s not that it took 1 million years to “figure out” farming. It’s that 1 specific culture of modern humans (biologically, humans as we conceive of ourselves today have existed for about 200,000 years, with close relatives existing for in the ballpark of 1M years) started practicing a specific mode of subsistence around 23,000 years ago. Specific groups of indigenous cultures remaining today still don’t practice agriculture, because it’s not actually advantageous in many ways – stored foods are less nutritious, agriculture requires a fairly sedentary existence, it takes a shit load of time to cultivate and grow food (especially when compared to foraging and hunting), which leads to less leisure time.

Agriculture is certainly more efficient in terms of nutrition production for a given calorie cost. It’s also much more reliable. Arguing against agriculture as a good thing for humanity as a whole is the thing that’s weird.

A better comparison would be today’s birds, which descended from theropods and are the only remaining members of the clade Dinosauria.

Tasers and shooting lightning from your fingertips aren’t even close to the same thing

But the point remains that, yes, society can do a thing but the power of wizards in most fantasy stories largely comes from personal, internal, strength rather than the ability to leverage a vast web of engineers, laborers and infrastructure in the outside world

If someone dropped you in a remote area you wouldn’t just whip up a quick dishwasher to get a job done. The parallel between technology and magic as seen in most fantasy stories is weak at best

Depends on how good the magic was. If it let you fireball a room full of goblins with a wave of your hand, read minds, lightning people with your fingertips like emperor palpatine, and conjure familiars to do your house work?

All without any manufacturing facilities and minimal capital outlay

I dare say physics would be more popular then

Smokers?! Have you ever been to France? It’s like a trip back in time to 80s America, with a smoker on every street corner and an ash tray on every cafe patio table.

Pangolins aren’t in Xanarthra though

What about the pangolin?