Contramuffin

My biggest concern is not that fertility rate is low/population decline is happening, it's that it's happening way too quickly for society to be able to handle it.

We're talking like 4 old people per child (estimated number). Not only would it be a massive strain on the economy to have so many elderly people/retirees to take care of, older people will also have a highly disproportionate account of political power due to their relative abundance. If it's already such a big deal that boomers were twisting the political landscape for their gain, I shudder to think what would happen at this larger and longer scale.

All of this is going to be a breeding ground for misogyny and right-wing ideology when people start thinking that it's [opposite gender]'s fault that they're not living as well as they were promised by the previous generation. We've already seen it in South Korea, and we're seeing it now with the rise of isolation and inceldom.

Plus, without younger people to take up the mantle, many industries that we rely on will need to downsize, and a lot of institutional knowledge will be lost. Many roles that require a "master-to-apprentice" style of learning will be lost and will be unable to recover, even if the population started growing again.

Fox News has the wrong take here, as it is wont to have. But we genuinely should be really concerned that birth rates across all developed countries are this low below replacement rate and are still dropping

Probably why they're making EuroOffice.

I'm not sure "expendable labor" is really the most accurate description. My understanding was that the pharoahs hired skilled artisans and craftsmen during winter seasons in exchange for food. They didn't use slaves to build the pyramids, to my understanding

Sure, but learning tends to be easier when there's a practical application to the things you're learning

Oh, the spider-squids definitely will trigger your disgust response. At least they evolve into something nicer after a while

I think in part because speculating what the land looks like on an alien planet is actually really hard to do, and the vast majority of artists just wing it. With sufficient planning and rigor, alien planets should look normal.

For instance, I think the landmass of Tira-292b looks pretty natural. It's a hypothetical planet created for the Alien Biospheres project, a YouTube series that tries to build up an alien ecosystem as accurately to science as reasonably possible

It's a seriously underrated series, I highly recommend everyone check it out

I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Not even an LLM can hallucinate an analogy this abstract

You described what an MCQ is, but I still don't see the relation to life.

Interesting, thanks for sharing that. I wasn't aware that there has been newer research countering the tooth wear model

There's a reason grass is so common - it's because it's a wildly effective life strategy. Grass is actually quite hard to eat - there's basically no nutrition in the leaves themselves, and grass evolved to incorporate silica "needles" in its leaves, so that it wears down your teeth when you try to eat it anyways.

Not to say that it's impossible to eat grass, but you need to undergo a ton of highly specialized adaptations to make it possible. For most animals (including humans), it's just not worth the effort

Oil-based markers are good for color blending, but are somewhat more expensive than regular. I personally wouldn't recommend using them for outlines due to the blending potential, but I believe I've seen people use them for outlines just fine. Personally, I'm pretty partial to acrylic paints. Water them down to get a nice watercolor-like texture, or use it as-is for a solid color. It's quite versatile, so you should be able to cover the background.

I don't have a good solution, but sundews seem to catch a shit ton of them