A shotgun
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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That our species took millions of years of evolution and the chance for it to be exactly this way was so infinitesimal... And yet here we are, chasing arbitrary numbers on paper-slices and in some bank-account while also being sexists, racists, whatever-ists and destroying the very rock we exist on. Yet things like star trek are called utopia not actual-ia.
This always baffle me.
Yes, but have you considered [INSERT OUTGROUP] are bad? /s
To play devil's advocate, considering that in evolutionary terms we just left the trees now, we're doing okay, honestly. I just don't know if it will be enough.
I dunno whether it counts: but that science has effectively cured AIDS.
In 2004, 2.1m people died from it. Twenty years later that figure was a little over a quarter at 630k. The goal for 2025 is 250k. I think that's absolutely remarkable.
As a child in the 80s I was terrified of AIDS. It made me low-key scared of gay men because the news made it sound like I could I could get it from any one of them. And here we now are, able to provide a medication that can almost completely ensure that you will never be infected by HIV.
Astonishing, really.
Yeah.
There's waaay worse things you can catch.
I'm terrified of going into lakes and rivers because of what might find its way into my skin.
Retinal photosynthesis, also known as the Purple Earth Theory. Colours are weird. Earth plants absorb red and blue light, they look green to us because that’s the wavelength of light that cannot be used by the chloroplasts.
It’s hypothesized that this was advantageous on Earth because blue light goes further into water than the other wavelengths, facilitating the development of photosynthetic algae
Retinal photosynthesis is another viable chemical chain reaction that could be used to create ATP (usable biological energy) from light.
It’s another molecule similar to chlorophyll, but it absorbs green light instead of red/blue - alien planets might be purple!
There’s a viable parallel evolutionary pathway that leads to plants with magenta leaves
alien planets could be purple
So the prophecies are true...
Actually, there's some contradicting evidence that came up recently-sh. If you factor in the challenge of not being fried by the very incoming light you need, every photosynthesiser is about the right colour for it's environment.
By that, alien planets would be coloured depending on their star type, and the ancient cyanobacteria of Earth were probably green too.
So humans vision is much more sensitive to green than other colors. it's why camera sensors are 50% green 25% red 25% blue. Which makes sense as being able to detect small differences in plant cover is useful in both detecting predators and prey.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
If humans had more flat color detection range we woulda actually be able to see that the sky is purple and not blue.
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