So in modern taxonomy there’s a concept called a “type specimen.” This is a preserved corpse, image, or detailed description which defines a type (species or genus). All the other attributes of a type definition basically amount to “is this close enough to Type Specimen XYZ to be called the same thing as it?” In the event that thinking on where the boundaries are set changes (and that happens ALL THE TIME) whatever’s on the same side of the new boundary keeps the old type; anything placed on the other side needs a new name. (And a new type specimen is selected for that new group.)
Now, this is a fairly recent innovation– older taxonomical systems going back to Linnaeus thought things would be more static than that, so they didn’t feel the need to have a system for what to do in the event of changes. Now, the rule for type specimens is that they have to be one the person who originally came up with the species knew / got to examine. For most of the species Linnaeus described, he’d worked from a specific specimen anyway, and at least a detailed description was preserved, so that was OK.
Problem was Homo sapiens. His description of us amounted to, well, “dis us.” So the modern taxonimists trying to retrofit THAT to up-to-date standards had to sit down and have a good think. And what they came up with was “Well… There’s one specimen of humanity we know for absolute certain Linnaeus examined in great detail. And there are images preserved, and we know where the remains are.”
So Carl Linnaeus is not just human… Carl Linnaeus is the one person who, no matter what the heck weird changes may happen in taxonomy, is human by definition.
Extremely handy if you follow a lot of people and hate missing anything good.
Best Stuff First moves the best stuff on your dashboard—mhm!—right up to the top.
It’s rolling out this week on iOS and Android, and comes with this Help Center article.
Thanks! ✌️
Head’s up folks! Tumblr decided to shit the bed and go non-chronological!
This bullshit is being rolled out this week and it’s going to be default!
Tags:
#…holy shit #I saw the original staff post but I missed the part where it’s *on by default* #I don’t use mobile but I’ll have to keep an eye on my settings to make sure they don’t do this to my laptop #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #Tumblr: a User’s Guide
oh, yeah, it’s artificial neural networks that do that, they’re the ones who call lots of things “dogs” that clearly aren’t dogs. no other sorts of minds would ever do that constantly
i’m sorry i understand this is trying to make a point but literally all i can think is “what the shit kind of graphic design is this”
Recently, I had a practice exercise for Critical Thinking class (Unit 7: How to Lie with Statistics) in which I had to find a terrible graph in a news source and explain why it was terrible.
As such, my reaction to this post is “*sigh* howmuch.net is at it again”.
(In the case of the post I linked, the article was even worse than the graph taken in isolation. Fun fact: as far as I can tell (and admittedly it’s not all that clear), the original data source uses “housing” to mean everything involved in maintaining a residence (such as utilities), but the article strongly implies that “housing” = “rent”. And they casually assume that a household with average income will also have average expenses, and at one point actually conflate income and expenses!)
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On the bright side, the OP is wtf-viz, which means that the point this post is trying to make is “what the shit kind of graphic design is this”.
Tags:
#adventures in University Land #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #(tangentially)
Favorite Girl Scout cookies, by state. Seeing this, my state is hungry.
Tags:
#…since when is New Jersey’s favorite Girl Scout cookie not Thin Mint #has something changed in the past ten years? #(okay things clearly *have* changed because I don’t recognise like half of these but still) #does North Jersey love Samoas enough to outweigh South Jersey’s love of Thin Mints? #(Samoas were pretty popular but not *Thin-Mint*-level popular) #home of the brave #food #Girl Scouts
Brinens and Things 