fireweed

Not a paleontologist, but these renditions seem shockingly consistent for a dinosaur. T-Rex for example went from full upright to balanced to covered in feathers in half this timeframe. And let's not even talk about poor iguanodon...

Absolutely. You used to be able to reliably go to the reddit comments section for more information/context, clarifications/corrections/alternative takes, sources/citations, etc. on pretty much any post. "The real TIL/joke/story is in the comments" and all that.

Nowadays the reddit comments section is all jokes (not even good ones), reaction gifs (not even relevant ones), and non sequiturs. I'm unclear what percentage is bots and what is oblivious people with nothing useful to add but a compulsion to contribute anyway.

I keep visiting the reddit comments section anyway out of habit, and nearly every time I walk away feeling disappointed and a little dirty. Fortunately Lemmy's comments are more like the old days when you at least felt like you were conversing with a human (and a literate one at that). Unfortunately outside of a few niche topics, Lemmy is severely lacking in subject matter experts, so there isn't anywhere near the same level of additional context and fact-checking on most posts that used to exist on reddit. I don't know if this is a demographics problem or a "we're under the critical mass threshold" problem; I assume it's both.

I assume Trump is supposed to be the angel wielding the flaming sword that guards Eden, although technically the actual passage (at least the NIV translation, which I'm using because it popped up first on my Google search) implies God ejected Adam and Eve and then placed the angel to stand guard after:

22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Feeders are okay, but the real joy comes from watching hummingbirds feed at flowers. In my experience they're big fans of fuchsias, and I've also seen them at fireweed.

Edit: dropped an h, misplaced an s

Off the top of my head: being multilingual appears to have various benefits for the brain, such as delaying the onset of dementia.

Hard disagree. I am not a linguist, but did study language acquisition a bit in the context of childhood development and unless the science on the topic has changed dramatically in the last decade, it seems pretty clear that there are physiological differences between child and adult brains that dramatically impacts language learning.

For example, there is a critical age period for being able to distinguish different sounds, something that if not learned during this period may be impossible to ever pick up. This age period is shockingly young; I don't remember exactly but iirc it's less than one year old.

The most well-known example is that in Japanese, R and L are the same letter (their R/L letter sounds like a cross between the two, with a bit of D thrown in). Thus Japanese people have difficulty distinguishing between R and L in English; I personally verified this with a bunch of my Japanese friends (including a number who spoke English very well) and they could not distinguish between "election" and "erection," no matter how clearly I enunciated. However this is far from the only example out there; native English speakers similarly struggle differentiating various sounds in languages from countries like India and China that are clear as day to those speakers. This is not a matter of will or attention or even practice, it's a brain issue.

Given this, I find it highly unlikely that there aren't other elements of language learning that are harder (or even impossible) to properly learn outside the critical window.

Also dependent on the state. Some states mandate minimum sick leave, others don't. Then there's the issue of paid vs unpaid: if you're living paycheck to paycheck it doesn't matter if you have all the unpaid sick leave in the world, you're not going to use it because you literally can't afford to.

Apparently the gardening and eco/tiny-house world is very wholesome, because that's 75% of what I watch (not including music) and I never see recommendations for ragebait.

There is a subscription page! I had no idea for years that in addition to the home page (which is a mix of subscription and algorithm videos) there's a subscription page which only lists videos from channels you're subscribed to, in order of recency.

I'm a big "fuck lawns" person, but I still have a small patch of grass* for playing, lounging, and other "foot traffic" activities. However it's no larger than I need it to be, and the rest of my yard is covered in native/pollinator/volunteer plants or vegetable garden.

I don't blame people for having a grass lawn to play on, but front lawns? Side walkways? Little strips next to the street, fence, or driveway? Funny corner spot that's three square feet? No one is playing catch or sunbathing or otherwise utilizing the grass in these spaces.

*It's not even 100% grass, as there's a lot of clover, self-heal, moss, and other "weeds" interspersed. As long as it wouldn't hurt to step on barefoot, I leave it be.

There's a phrase: food not lawns. It's usually used for promoting growing produce at home, but I think the concept needs a slight expansion: food or habitat, for people or animals. You mention decorative flowers, shrubs, and trees: there are many species of these that feed or shelter wildlife, so many in fact that it's not in any way difficult to exclusively plant these over ones that don't in most settings and climates.

In other words, there are plenty of "productive" uses of yard space other than food production for human consumption, of course. But I like this comic because I like the question posed (when expanded a bit): if we're actively cultivating a plant, rather than leaving the space wild (where it could feed and shelter wildlife) and it's not for us to eat, and wildlife can't eat it or shelter in it either, then what are we doing?

Everyone makes fun of California's prop 65 warnings, but this is exactly the situation they exist for: knowing which colorful plate sets to avoid at Crate & Barrel.