u/IsaacHasenov

This is following up on the discussion by Will Duffy and Gutsick Gibbon on the following video https://www.youtube.com/live/apW16s2kJwg?is=pJidxzlKcIm1I5pe about whether snakes are tetrapods.

It's pretty much definitional sophistry in my opinion, and in no way invalidates evolution but it seems like Will was getting stuck on turtles and birds and snakes.

But as a thought experiment, imagine a weasel species started feeding its babies regurgitated flesh instead of milk. Imagine it lost its mammary gland function. Not a big evolutionary change. Not a "body plan" change. But now mammal != mammary!!! Does this make the barf-weasel not a mammal? Does it mean we need to rename the clade to something like hirsutia? Does it invalidate the theory of evolution?

Note: I'm trying to represent someone else's argument with a thought experiment. The argument to me seems prima facie nonsense, and I hope the thought experiment makes it clear why. It seems like Will was trying to say "phenetics makes more sense than cladistics, and classification should be based on single diagnostic traits"

Rewatching The Bachelor Party... Now that I live in LA I just realized the Ano-Movicians are basically just the Armenians of the Buffyverse

So weird

I'm rereading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and looking at the character dynamics right from the beginning it's kind of hilarious how frustrated I am with everyone.

But it feels as if there are certain people, that if the psych team had eliminated them, the whole future of the planet would have been different. Even someone less-obvious would make a huge difference:

* If Arkady (one of my favorite characters) hadn't come and revved up everyone's tension on the voyage to Mars, and the surface, would there have been less pervasive conflict

* If Ann (one of my least favorite, up until Blue Mars) hadn't come, would the whole Red Mars movement have even started? Would they have messed around with terraforming half-measures (I am still pissed off they didn't keep the mirror)

* If any psychologist besides sad-sack Michel had been in place, would all the issues between the first hundred been allowed to fester?

Who are the real linch pins? What are the best what-ifs (fuck Phyllis, eg)?