Quite awhile; despite what some popular scifi depicts mars isn’t really the best target out there for space colonies (and is too long a trip for short duration tourism), so first the technology and infrastructure to do those would need to be developed, and then the more convenient or economically attractive locations to set one up would have to be already taken, and then someone would need to have set up a mars colony and developed to the point where it isn’t just a research base and actually has the capacity and use for a growing population, none of those steps are short things.

Especially that first step is tough, because launching large amounts of mass to space, let alone all the way out to mars, is incredibly expensive, so getting any of this started requires either a way to get to space without rockets (like space elevators or similar ideas, which require better materials than we currently can mass produce and would represent hugely expensive infrastructure investments to build once we have the ability), or the ability to extract and use raw materials in space to build, well, almost everything except the actual people to be sent there. Which is also something where the technology hasn’t quite been developed, though progress has been made, and in any case is a bit of a chicken and egg problem because launching all that heavy mining and processing and manufacturing equipment to get it started is so expensive.

I would not personally expect things to get to a point where a middle class (or even typical rich person for that matter) can go to mars for several centuries, unless you count scientists sent by a government and not on their own dime. I do believe we’ll get there, someday, but it’s an incredibly long and difficult process, much more complicated than people like, say, Elon Musk make it out to be when they make wild claims about building a city there in a matter of decades.

No. Consider that arguing is a skill that people do not all possess to an equal degree, and what implications that has.

Suppose there’s an ongoing debate about some issue with two sides, side A and side B. Now suppose that, while the people involved might not all know or believe or understand why, side A is objectively correct in this instance, side B believes something that simply does not match with how the universe works, but matches observations close enough for this to not necessarily be clear to humans, hence the argument.

What happens if someone who is not especially skilled at arguing takes side A, and someone who is rather good at it takes side B? There’s a pretty good chance that side B “wins”, on account of being better at winning arguments, but if the person on side A changes their mind, they would actually be more wrong than before.

The point of this isn’t to say one should never change ones mind of course, just to point put that arguments are actually a rather flawed way to determine truth, and therefore that losing one isnt enough proof on it’s own to require one change one’s mind if one doesn’t find the points raised genuinely convincing.

It can be better than nothing, especially if the participants are both skilled and to an equal degree, and actually aim to find the most defensible position rather than treating the thing as a competition with a winner, but that is not what most arguments are, and if I was to bet, I’d guess that the percentage of internet arguments especially, made by the majority of people not actively trained in this (or who are trained in it but as a competitive sport, like in debate completions), that can be described that way is very close to zero.

Cnidarians. (The sort of animals that includes jellyfish and sea anenomes and coral and such). Theyre so old that the first known predatory animal as far as I’m aware was one of them, and some of them still resemble those ancient versions to a significant degree. Even tho every time theres a mass extinction corals seem to be some of the first things to go, and jellyfish tend to be slow, stupid and not very good at controlling where they go, it somehow works out for them.

Having a pet lizard has made me have a hard time taking the “lizard people/reptilians” conspiracy theorists seriously. Like, have these people actually been around reptiles? Deeply unserious creatures. Not generally social, sure, but they definitely have body language and would fail terribly at running some kind of complex scheme.

I feel like this makes sense for very politically focused spaces, especially for less “mainstream” ideas like db0’s anarchist communities, just cause not every community will allow arguments about their stance, and even ones that do will see more arguments turn into flame wars and incivility than communities for which there simply isnt as much for heated arguments to start over, especially when the arguments arent always something “new” to that space and might just be someone from outside noticing and saying “your ideology is bad because [insert reason that community has probably heard enough before to be tired of]”.

Am a bit curious about why pawb is so high though, Ive not really noticed much of the hate that furries sometimes would get on other platforms (I guess it could be because theyre all banned but I doubt it, because that wouldnt hide it from communities outside of pawb). The instance administration has always felt rather reasonable whenever Ive seen like instance announcements or defederation decisions or such too, at least by my standards. Itd be interesting maybe to see what communities these bans tend to come from and what reasons are given, just looking through the modlog doesnt seem to help much there given that it doesnt seem to let one sort by instance.

I feel like that would really skew the data, because it would then just be “instances that defederate some big instances (or just ones that defederate .world) and others that dont”, It’d be hard to ban a major instances worth of users with even a heavy handed “normal” moderation strategy surely?

I dont usually bother with the glass, I just scoop them up with the paper and try to reposition it so that they dont crawl off before I reach the door

Iapetus and Io. Iapetus just looks pretty, with it’s two tone color and equatorial ridge, and Io is a volcano dominated world in a way that seems unique in the solar system if we exclude cryovolcanism, maybe earth comes the closest but it’s not nearly the same.

Im not sure that’d count, as while there are social and legal repercussions and a higher risk of a few diseases, human meat, billionaire or not, isnt inheritly toxic or such, and does contain nutritional value.

There is a type of beetle grub used as reptile food that some people call a morio worm, you could fairly easily set up a colony of those if you need something morio.

A decent amount of green, there’s like a one or two day window where it’s possible to peel them normally without the peel snapping, but where there’s still a little bit of the underripe sourness to them

No hope to avoid/treat what exactly? Like I get the joke is that the image is strange and implied to be strange enough to imply some kind of untreatable mental issue, but I cant figure out what issue thats supposed to be implied to be.

Can it really be called a Carnivorse when it’s victim is a plant?

For the second category: dragonfruit looks amazing, but tastes like you took sugar-water for a hummingbird and solidified it. Basically no flavor apart from mild sweetness, unless I got a dud or something

Is it a practical example for dealing with a country that is (or at least makes it an open secret that it very probably is) nuclear armed though?

German “denazification” first required complete military defeat and occupation of the German state, that’s not really practical to achieve when the country to be occupied has the option to devastate whatever country it’s fighting as a deterrent/revenge once it concludes defeat is inevitable. As such, what is needed here I think is examples of how to defuse such a situation and push a population away from violence purely through limited conflict, economic pressure, sponsorship of internal dissent, etc

That calcium-loving one that eats your bones if you touch it?

It really depends actually. It certainly can be those things and often is, it can also be a strange comfort thing (it often doesn’t follow biology much at all, so it needn’t be realistically harmful and sometimes gets treated as like very unconventional hugs), or just a power fantasy if done from the predator’s perspective

Does niche fetish stuff that isnt exactly designed to offend but which would seem scary or disturbing to most people who’s brains don’t happen to be wired to enjoy it count as transgressive? If so, (a subset of) vore art

Meanwhile, I already save all the time used to fold laundry, plus the money to buy a robot, by simply sticking it in the dresser drawers unfolded. Who even decided to make that a thing anyway, not like it makes it cleaner.

If your species showed affection by rubbing against others and you trusted the creature not to step on you, and you were trying to act all sweet to beg for food tho…