u/sonicparadigm

There are quite a lot of bad things going on in the world, no doubt. And I have been through a lot of trouble to find out about all of them without feeling like I’ve been sticking my head in the sand. So I have a lesson for you: DOOMSCROLLING HAS DIMINISHING RETURNS.
Now I only check the news for a few minutes a couple times a day and I find out everything I need to know. The more you doomscroll, it can feel like you are learning more but after the first few posts, everything else is just different iterations and takes on the same things. Only so many things can happen in one day. And if something was ACTUALLY important, you’d find it out within minutes or even seconds of checking the news. (And also why now every day first thing in the morning I go to the Crab Rave comment section on Youtube just in case ;) )

And also to stop doomscrolling I set some ”taboos” on it. Mine are:

Don’t check *some* news subs more than once every few days (You know what kinds of subs I’m talking about)

When I do, I check optimistic/level headed places like these to get other perspectives and think for myself which one is right

NO DOOMSCROLLING PAST 11:30 PM (This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but if I break it, the next morning, I remember why that rule exists…)

All these strategies helped me, and now that they are on the Internet, maybe they can help you too…

I was wondering this, which island has been isolated from other continents for the longest time?

The timer will start from:

If it's a volcanic island: When it first came out of the sea/last time it was fully submerged

If it's a continental island: When it separated from another continent, either via continental drift or sea level rise

English has many loanwords. Read that word again. Loanwords. They aren't called stolen words; they aren't even called copied words. The words are loaned, which means we will have to give them back one day. I sure hope the languages that receive these words will still accept some of them, after they have been made unrecognizable by us Anglos.

I was just wondering what the very first one was. This is surprisingly hard to google because if you google "first fossil vertebrate to be described" Google thinks you mean Haikouichthys and its ilk. The oldest I can find is the American mastodon, all the way back in 1792! Or as it was named, Elephas americanus. And since this was before the belief that animals could go extinct became accepted, whoever named it that probably thought that there were elephants still roaming an unexplored region of America. Some more of the very first ones I found are the cave bear, 1794, and Megatherium, 1796. Do you know any other of the very first ones/anywhere I could search for them?

(And by "described" I mean given a Linnaean name, so Scrotum humanum is sadly out of the running)