That makes a lot of sense. Katamari Damacy is also an excellent game with such a bizarre story. I’m guess I’m a fan of absurdity.

My favorite game in the series was Super Mario 3. I first played it on the SNES when it was part of the Super Mario All Stars cartridge. I really liked the levels, especially the variety of landscapes and the secrets you could find if you had the right powerup.

Super Mario World is just as good imo. Everything I liked about 3 and more, plus the star road levels, that was a good game.

The most recent game I loved was Yoshi’s Wooly World on the WiiU. Excellent art style and super fun levels, especially the unlockable bonus levels.

Oh and let’s not forget Legend of the Seven Stars. That was a fun and bizarre story.

That being said, does anyone else think the Mario universe is just fucking weird? How did the creators come up with Italian plumbers who can jump really high saving a Princess from an oversized turtle in a fantasy land with walking mushrooms? Who thought that was a good idea? What inspired them? I think the only reason it became popular was because Super Mario on the NES was one of the first decent games, and most players were kids who didn’t care about the game’s universe and narrative beyond saving the princess.

If Mario wasn’t the first popular platformer in the 80s and was instead introduced today, nobody would take it seriously. Since we all grew up with Mario, it’s a thing we accept as is. Of course high jumping Italian plumbers discovered the mushroom kingdom and rescued their princess from Bowser, again and again and again. Of course little dudes with mushroom heads are ruled by a blond haired human. Of course giant pipes are a normal mode of transit. Of course goombas and koopa troopas are the baddies.

Seriously, how did this universe come about?

Did this leak happen before or after NYT published an investigation detailing how Israeli forces were raping and torturing defenseless Palestinian detainees brought in from the Gaza Strip?

I bet an AI could do it

Bah, the data is on their websites, figure out how to collect it.

Why is there not an app that tells you which grocery stores have the best prices? I should be able to give it a list and it’ll tell me where to buy each item.

The gestures are awesome! The best part of my old moto was turning on my flashlight just by shaking the phone. So convenient. Turning it on with any other phone is a whole process that takes forever.

About 6 montha ago I wanted to replace my S21 battery and checked with Samsung, who redirected me to iFixit. The only genuine Samsung S21 battery they had was only sold with the screen, which cost ~$130 or something. I didn’t need the screen…

Last month I checked again and saw they had a third party replacement battery for ~$30, same capacity. I bought it and popped it in. It’s been working fine.

Was it Samsung’s requirement that the battery only be sold with the screen? At the time, I would have rather had the genuine Samsung battery and would have paid a bit extra for it, but not $100 extra.

Sexual selection is a subcategory of natural selection

Weaker is in quotes, which suggests to me they don’t mean weaker, just those carrying potentially deleterious traits. Plus, if those people are reproducing, those traits can’t be that bad anyway.

They never said nor implied that

You need to read a genetics textbook and then some evolutionary biology so you understand OPs question.

Pretty much everyone here either misunderstands how evolution works, or is willfully ignoring it to push their viewpoint.

Yes! Finally someone else who knows how…

Humans at this point have very little evolutionary pressure from natural selection.

Oh come on! Such a strong start but then you fell on your face. Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It never lets up. It’s more about reproduction than staying alive. Natural selection is happening every time someone reproduces more than someone else.

Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean what you think it means. Fitness, in the evolutionary sense, is a quantitative representation of individual reproductive success. So yes, the fittest of us do survive in the sense that their genes are passed on far more often than those that are less fit. For example, the overweight, nearsighted, diabetic car salesman with a lethal peanut allergy that has 16 children is more fit than most people on the planet.

Populations do not mutate. Mutations occur randomly within individuals, they do not occur to fit a changing environment, they only occur randomly. A mutation can spread through a population if nothing selects against it. Selection never waits, it’s always there in one form or another.

Bro you did not understand anything he asked about

I’d argue a housecat and a bobcat share a similar ecological niche. Haven’t the housecats simply replaced the bobcats that were largely removed by humans?

Wild Cats Of North America:

Bobcat

Canada Lynx

Puma / Mountain Lion / Cougar

Ocelot

Jaguarundi

Jaguar

Margay

It’s like we’re going back to the pre-internet era but it’s obviously a little different. Before the internet, there were just a few major media providers on TV plus lots of local newspapers. I would say that, for the most part in the USA, the public trusted TV news sources even though their material interests weren’t aligned (regular people vs big media corporations). It felt like there wasn’t a reason not to trust them, since they always told an acceptable version of the truth and there wasn’t an easy way to find a different narrative (no internet or crazy cable news). Local newspapers were usually very trusted, since they were often locally owned and part of the community.

The internet broke all of those business models. Local newspapers died because why do you need a paper when there are news websites? Major media companies were big enough to weather the storm and could buy up struggling competitors. They consolidated and one in particular started aggressively spinning the news to fit a narrative for ratings and political gain of the ownership class. Other companies followed suit.

This, paired with the thousands of available narratives online, weakened the credibility of the major media companies. Anyone could find the other side of the story or fact check whatever was on TV.

Now what is happening? The internet is being polluted with garbage and lies. It hasn’t been good for some time now. Obviously anyone could type up bullshit, but for a minute photos were considered reliable proof (usually). Then photoshopping something became easier and easier, which made videos the new standard of reliable proof (in most cases).

But if anything can be fake now and difficult to identify as fake, then how can you fact check anything? Only those with the means will be able to produce undeniably real news with great difficulty, which I think will return power to major news companies or something equivalent.

I’m probably wrong about what the future holds, so what do you think is going to happen?

Russia doesn’t need Ukraine on its own, they need Ukraine to get access Poland, Romania and Moldova.

But why? Poland and Romania are already in NATO. Isn’t that why they’re attacking Ukraine now and Georgia in 2008, to prevent them from joining NATO?