allan 📊 @allan

@opendork it mostly talks about birds. But I love the idea that, were elephants to have an internet, it would just be memes of humans being cute

@opendork Oh, also, apparently giraffes are super gay and nobody knows why
https://www.queerty.com/excerpt-giraffes-mostly-homosexual-20190323

This has nothing to do with anything, but it just popped up in my rss reader and the convergence was too delightful to ignore.

@opendork exactly.

There was a radiolab episode recently that talked about aesthetic preferences in animals and the best part was how much this rocked everyone's worlds. Humans express aesthetic preferences all the time and humans are animals. But the idea that _other_ animals could possibly do so is shocking and iconoclastic.

I mean...

There are lots of ways to live your life, but really only one gets baked into evolution -- the need to breed. We look backwards at the traceries of history and say "ah, the need to breed got us here, ergo everything must be due to that" and I think that's an obvious logical faceplant.

So in conclusion, why is nobody studying the gay party scene of weedy sea dragons?

I know it is definitely a thing to frame all human activities in terms of (1), but I've never found that terribly satisfying. It seems like it is playing a rather flagrant game of hopscotch across Hume's ought/is divide,.

Yes, evolution is how I ended up with the physiological and neurological tools I happen to have. But that doesn't mean I _should_ lead my life any particular way nor does it really explain the diversity of things I do with my free time.

It just got me thinking, it would be inexplicable via those very same rules of evolution, for us to have come upon our behaviours suddenly and inexplicably. We are stuck with two possible conclusions:
1. Me laying here, being queer, in my pyjamas, listening to the dulcet tones of a David Attenborough narration is somehow advancing my selfish genes, or
2. Animals have much richer lives than we give them credit for.

I'm watching nature documentaries, because that's what Saturday morning is for, and I wonder more and more about the lives of animals when they aren't doing the Evolution Approved™ activities.

Like most animal behaviour is framed in terms of either finding food, avoiding being food, and bumping uglies (aka mating). and yeah a large part of human existence is those three too, but we also do other things with our days? For example this, this right here, is one.

@ink_slinger deep below the legislature, in a room with row after row of blinking servers, a red light is flashing. This toot has been flagged and the Rat Patrol have been alerted.

@varx @ink_slinger in the early days the legislature wouldn't even convene until someone brought in an old toilet float spray painted gold (the original ceremonial mace)

@ink_slinger @RexfordGTugwell I mean it is actually entirely a coincidence, but my alternative history of the rat patrol is far more interesting.

@RexfordGTugwell @ink_slinger
And CFB Suffield in the south which, controversially, stored large reserves of chemical weapons and once, in a tragic case friendly fire incident, gassed a herd of wild horses. - 2/2

@ink_slinger @RexfordGTugwell it is also no coincidence that two of Alberta's largest military bases are strategically located with respect to the rat control zone. CFB Cold Lake in the north marking the furthest extent of the Norway rat and still harbouring a large expanse of forest closed to public access due to the potential dangers of unexploded ordinance. A dark legacy but the price that had to be paid to hold the line - 1/2

@RexfordGTugwell @ink_slinger the Alberta government has a website on the history of the rat patrol and it looks like the Dept. of Public Health were the first ones to find rats in the province while studying sylvatic plague. Initially the rat concern was about plague.

By the end of 1950 responsibility was transferred to the Dept. of Agriculture
https://www.alberta.ca/history-of-rat-control-in-alberta.aspx

@ink_slinger @RexfordGTugwell It could be that rat control emerged out of an existing program for, say, controlling the spread of fleas and ticks. Hence why it was being run by the public health folks: it was about preventing the plague rather than finding and appreciating insects.

@ink_slinger Uh.. and because at any given time there are more adults than infants the statistical impact of Laughing Georg has waned as they have aged into a different demographic...

@ink_slinger that's actually just statistical error. The average person laughs 0 times per day. Laughing Georg, who lives in cave & laughs maniacally throughout the day and night, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

Over time, however, I have undergone a rhetorical transition, not entirely without precedent, introducing the very superfluous redundancy with which the preferences of the aforementioned historical entity were greatly at odds.

"Just say what you mean!" he pleads

"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request" I demure

A coworker just edited some of my writing and commented on my use of the word "aforementioned". She hates it. At first blush, why? it's a word and is appropriate in context. But then...

When I was fresh faced and right out of school I was a strong advocate for plain language. Write what you mean and don't tart it up with unnecessary verbosity.

@erinbee it's like they're setting you up for an inevitable Aileron? is it spelled Aileron?