What about caring for the elderly and disabled? We see anthropological evidence of many behaviours that can only be explained by compassion and empathy, some of which would have actually detracted from security.

The notion that the early formation of societies was based on security rather than empathy is outdated. Compassion has many evolutionary advantages, especially in primate species where offspring are born vulnerable. It’s clearly evident in other primates who live in groups (or ‘societies’), as a driving force of cooperation and group cohesion.

Here’s a recent paper (2022) by Penny Spikins, PhD at the University of York, Department of Archaeology, that explores how compassion shaped early human evolution and the formation of societies: The Evolutionary Basis for Human Empathy, Compassion and Generosity.

And here’s another from 2011 by Goetz et al that explores in detail the evolutionary advantages of compassion: Compassion: An Evolutionary Analysis and Empirical Review.

Those papers are both fascinating reads, and I highly recommend them for a deeper understanding of why and how empathy is crucial to our success as a species.

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Millions of years, likely. The whole reason we’re successful is because our pre-human ancestors were empathetic and cooperative enough to build societies.

We see those same traits in many other primates, and they’re not something it makes sense to evolve, lose, and evolve again. Those traits predate us.

Language almost certainly predates us, since we see it not only in other primates, but in non-primate species, too. And based on the humour we see in many animals, you can bet we were making dick jokes nearly out of the gate.

That’s amazing! But fuck it for putting naked Alex Jones in my head. I was hoping to sleep peacefully tonight.

Kinky.

Didn’t he transfer that to his dad? He’s been very public about illegally subverting parts of his judgement by transferring some ownership to his dad.

In case you haven’t seen it:

Gay Frogs Remix

I was hoping it would be Knowledge Fight and they’d just subtly transform the content, so as to wean the existing audience into actual facts (e: Dan does a helluvan Alex impression), but the schadenfreude here is very nice.

Lemmy and BlueSky (primarily Lemmy).

BlueSky’s mobile app is such a clone of twitter, transitioning is nearly seamless for the average user. I tried mastodon at first, but it felt pretty rocky and different (and I’m rather techy).

Between BlueSky and Voyager for Lemmy (I was an Apollo user on Reddit), my user experience hasn’t changed at all – except for the pleasant lack of bots and Nazis on both platforms.

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Ooh, thanks for the reminder! Mine expires next year. Best renew it now before they fuck that up, too.

And who is likely to nominate an antivax, anti-science lunatic with brain worms to head the dept of Health and Human Services?

And who is planning to eliminate the department of education and NOAA?

Previous administrations have done damage through incompetence and/or malice, but the plan this time is on another level. They’re going in with the goal of breaking everything.

He’s clearly an accelerationist. Rebuilding the temple on the Mount is a requirement for Jesus to come back and kick off biblical Armageddon.

Trump has surrounded himself with insane people who are hell-bent on destroying the world so they can be raptured. Choosing people for these roles who openly say shit like this further proves that is their actual plan.

They want to destroy the world and jumpstart their revelations prophecy. They don’t give a shit what happens to the rest of us.

You can’t just pick up your factory, drop it in Kansas, and just slot people into the building to work it right away.

This was demonstrated in Springfield, OH. That whole thing about Haitian immigrants? A large factory opened there, but they couldn’t find Americans who wanted to work there for wages that would make them profitable, so the mayor sent out a call welcoming Haitian immigrants to the town. They were invited specifically for this reason.

What happens when immigration is halted and people are deported? Where do they expect to find Americans willing to work for wages that will have to be even lower to make up the costs the tariffs will cause?

It takes only minutes of thought to realise how stupid and doomed trump’s plan is (which is obviously more than his supporters can manage).

They couldn’t afford trump pardons, anyhow. The asking price was $2 million each.

Considering evolutionary time scales, this trait may have been a response to something large and dangerous that’s extinct now.

Human waste products I can understand. But how many humans would you need to mulch to get enough blood for a building project? That’s one of the main fluids we usually want to stay inside our bodies.

It won’t fare well for most of us once habitable regions are flooded with climate refugees whose entire life savings and livelihoods have been wiped out.

But that doesn’t matter as long as profits are up in the short term, and it especially doesn’t matter to the handful of people who have hoarded enough resources to last them the next thousand years. They have bunkers and yachts and stuff. They’ll be fine, and they’re the ones deciding policy for the rest of us. Maybe they can make reality television where the rest of us fight hunger games style.

On a totally unrelated note, I’ve heard humans taste like pork.

It’s a nice sauce for pork dishes, and I hear humans have been called ‘long pork’…

I am on the outskirts of nowhere and disabled. All my options are big chains. I wish they weren’t – my small town is now all hair salons, Tai Quan Do studios, pubs, florists, and yard or antique shops. No local shops here carry life supplies (food, toiletries , drinks, medicine) except the gas station (in very small quantities).