In four billion years, there have been many continents that died.
You’ve heard of the famous ones–Pangaea, proud monolith; Laurasia, home of dinosaurs–but there were others, so many, many others. The grand march of time swallowed islands whole, scraped them up like residue from the baking pan of the world.
Everything has a soul. Everything remembers.
Gondwana floats gently over London now, remembering when the world was hot and green. She loves the lights. There were no lights, when she was alive. There were no lights when the world was so hot and green.
Rodinia settles onto the dry Atacama, bringing moisture from the sea. She moves much faster now, unhindered by gravity and friction, slipping through the walls of this new house. The walls are always moving, yet she stays, floating in and out, bringing moisture.
Vaalbara, eldest and most fire-born, sneaks in tendrils and wisps over her old haunting grounds. Her bones are buried in the outback, ancient cratons resting unrotted through all the fearsome gnawing of time. She likes the summers here. The heat reminds her, so faintly, of what it was like to be born. In the wildfires, she sees the magma oceans of her youth.
I have had this on my mind for days, someone please help:
Why are dogs dogs?
I mean, how do we see a pug and then a husky and understand that both are dogs? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a picture of a breed of dog I hadn’t seen before and wondered what animal it was.
Do you want the Big Answer or the Small Answers cos I have a feeling this is about to get Intense
Oooh okay are YOU gonna answer this, hang on I need to get some snacks and make sure the phone is off.
The short answer is “because they’re statistically unlikely to be anything else.”
The long question is “given the extreme diversity of morphology in dogs, with many subsets of ‘dogs’ bearing no visual resemblance to each other, how am I able to intuit that they belong to the ‘dog’ set just by looking?”
The reason that this is a Good Big Question is because we are broadly used to categorising Things as related based on resemblances. Then everyone realized about genes and evolution and so on, and so now we have Fun Facts like “elephants are ACTUALLY closely related to rock hyraxes!! Even though they look nothing alike!!”
These Fun Facts are appealing because they’re not intuitive. So why is dog-sorting intuitive?
Well, because if you eliminate all the other possibilities, most dogs are dogs.
To process Things – whether animals, words, situations or experiences – our brains categorise the most important things about them, and then compare these to our memory banks. If we’ve experienced the same thing before – whether first-hand or through a story – then we know what’s happening, and we proceed accordingly.
If the New Thing is completely New, then the brain pings up a bunch of question marks, shunts into a different track, counts up all the Similar Traits, and assigns it a provisional category based on its similarity to other Things. We then experience the Thing, exploring it further, and gaining new knowledge. Our brain then categorises the New Thing based on the knowledge and traits. That is how humans experience the universe. We do our best, and we generally do it well.
This is the basis of stereotyping. It underlies some of our worst behaviours (racism), some of our most challenging problems (trauma), helps us survive (stories) and sharing the ability with things that don’t have it leads to some of our most whimsical creations (artificial intelligence.)
In fact, one reason that humans are so wonderfully successful is that we can effectively gain knowledge from experiences without having experienced them personally! You don’t have to eat all the berries to find the poisonous ones. You can just remember stories and descriptions of berries, and compare those to the ones you’ve just discovered. You can benefit from memories that aren’t your own!
On the other hand, if you had a terribly traumatic experience involving, say, an eagle, then your brain will try to protect you in every way possible from a similar experience. If you collect too many traumatic experiences with eagles, then your brain will not enjoy eagle-shaped New Things. In fact, if New Things match up to too many eagle-like categories, such as
* pointy * Specific!! Squawking noise!! * The hot Glare of the Yellow Eye * Patriotism?!? * CLAWS VERY BAD VERY BAD
Then the brain may shunt the train of thought back into trauma, and the person will actually experience the New Thing as trauma. Even if the New Thing was something apparently unrelated, like being generally pointy, or having a hot glare. (This is an overly simplistic explanation of how triggers work, but it’s the one most accessible to people.)
So the answer rests in how we categorise dogs, and what “dog” means to humans. Human brains associate dogs with universal categories, such as
* four legs * Meat Eater * Soft friend * Doggo-ness???? * Walkies * An Snout, * BORK BORK
Anything we have previously experienced and learned as A Dog gets added to the memory bank. Sometimes it brings new categories along with it. So a lifetime’s experience results in excellent dog-intuition.
And anything we experience with, say, a 90% match is officially a Dog.
Brains are super-good at eliminating things, too. So while the concept of physical doggo-ness is pretty nebulous, and has to include greyhounds and Pekingese and mastiffs, we know that even if an animal LOOKS like a bear, if the other categories don’t match up in context (bears are not usually soft friends, they don’t Bork Bork, they don’t have long tails to wag) then it is statistically more likely to be a Doggo. If it occupies a dog-shaped space then it is usually a dog.
So if you see someone dragging a fluffy whatnot along on a string, you will go,
* Mop?? (Unlikely – seems to be self-propelled.) * Alien? (Unlikely – no real alien ever experienced.) * Threat? (Vastly unlikely in context.) * Rabbit? (No. Rabbits hop, and this appears to scurry.) (Brains are very keen on categorising movement patterns. This is why lurching zombies and bad CGI are so uncomfortable to experience, brains just go “INCORRECT!! That is WRONG!” Without consciously knowing why. Anyway, very few animals move like domestic dogs!) * Very fluffy cat? (Maybe – but not quite. Shares many characteristics, though!) * Eldritch horror? (No, it is obviously a soft friend of unknown type) * Robotic toy? (Unlikely – too complex and convincing.) * alert: amusing animal detected!!! This is a good animal!! This is pleasing!! It may be appropriate to laugh at this animal, because we have just realized that it is probably a … * DOG!!!! Soft friend, alive, walks on leash. It had a low doggo-ness quotient! and a confusing Snout, but it is NOT those other Known Things, and it occupies a dog-shaped space! * Hahahaha!!! It is extra funny and appealing, because it made us guess!!!! We love playing that game. * Best doggo. * PING! NEW CATEGORIES ADDED TO “Doggo” set: mopness, floof, confusing Snout.
And that’s why most dogs are dogs. You’re so good at identifying dog-shaped spaces that they can’t be anything else!
I feel like this explains why Very Young Kids call every unknown foru-legged creature a Dog
Adding different characteristics together into an idea of what something is is called a schema. That’s exactly why young kids do it: they’re so young that they haven’t had a lot of experience with building schemas for things. For example their schema of a dog may = four legs and soft but not not include bark. So when they see an animal that has for legs and is tiny, like a cat or a rabbit, they may end up calling it a dog because it fits into their schema of what a dog *is*. Once they know that dogs bark or that cats are fairly different animals that ALSO are four legged and soft, they can redefine the schema accordingly so that now dog = soft, four legs, and bark, while cat might = soft, four legs, and purr.
you can use marxist analytical tools to approach pretty much anything and that can be useful and enlightening – examining, for example, how the sex work economy actually functions can help you form a more nuanced opinion on sex work as a whole. same with feminism. marxism and feminism are essentially analytical toolboxes that you can use to interpret shit. you can agree with a marxist interpretation of a phenomenon without, like, being a diehard communist. you can agree with a feminist interpretation of phenomenae without, like, signing a contract to kill a man, too. having critical thinking skills means being able to argue about what ideas are good and why, and what ideas are bad and why. there’s nothing inherently good about forming all your opinions based on what your immediate gut reaction is, and there’s also nothing inherently good about relying on a particular ideological framework to analyze everything. sometimes one toolkit is better for the job than another toolkit. your gut reactions, in fact, are your own personal toolkit for analysis, provided to you for free by your central nervous system, and like any free software it’s kind of a piece of shit sometimes. so like… there’s no need for you to Belong to a movement for you to use analytical tools to turn data into a hypothesis. you don’t have to sign up for anything. you just have to be capable of understanding how to use analysis. like, fuck the rules, you’re a tool-using mammal! go find yourself a nice slender twig of analysis to stick down the termite hill of the discourse and retrieve yourself some crunchy little termites of truth, you sly biped
ransom gets a ph.d in biology and does teaching and research. in other words, he becomes a brofessor.
in all seriousness though, ransom being prof sounds so…nice.
Dr. O.
chili peppers on ratemyprofessor
often opens lecture with a story from college
makes “…and I had a nickname!” and everyone guessing that nickname a running joke
when he draws molecular structures on the chalkboard, he draws the O in oxygen to look like him
super accommodating to student athletes and students with mental illnesses
like he’s also HOT and other profs are like ~*i know i’m no justin oluransi*~ as a joke
in a lecture about concussions he puts a press picture of jack zimmermann in hockey gear on one slide and then in the next slide, puts that picture of jack and him on canada day and captions it “I worry about him everyday” and everyone loses their shit
cancels a lecture after the hockey team makes the playoffs
Okay now that I stopped my original freak out over how perfect this is…
You know he’s one of those professors that’s so accommodating to his students’ learning styles and disabilities.
He’s got like six different versions of his tests, ranging from the standard written exam to an oral exam. He’ll even accept a video or something, where the student explains what they know.
His policy is basically “show me that you understand the material and you’ll pass.”
He also understands the importance of having a personal life in addition to the studious life.
He’s totally the professor from that “weekend homework” post where students have to like switch religions for a day, master karate, or call their mother/father.
He has all his students write a “college bucket list” at the beginning of the semester and will give extra credit if you cross something (legal) off it and write a short paper about the experience. You have to tie it into biology, though.
Ie. “I did this thing and here’s how the chemicals in my brain reacted/here’s how my vitals changed.”
He teaches a low-level biology class that’s geared towards non-science majors. Everyone wants to take it to fill their science requirement.
The wait list is basically half the student body population.
It’s mostly athletes who get into the class, since they get to register for classes earlier than everyone else.
The list to be one of his TA’s is just as long as the wait lists for all his classes. He tries to take as many as possible, but the University has a limit that he has to adhere to.
He handles dissection better than any other professor. He basically runs two subsets of it: the “doers” and the “watchers.”
The “doers” are all the kids who want to dissect. He’ll schedule extra lab time and let them dissect whatever they want (within reason) during that time.
The “watchers” are the kids who don’t want to physically dissect anything. They have to have the experience, but he’ll do the dissections for them so they don’t have to.
He’s pretty open about his personal life and background, especially his status as a former DI athlete. He constantly uses his experiences to explain the stuff in lectures.
Every freshman gets heartbroken a little when they find out he’s married. Every freshman girl gets more heartbroken when they find out he’s married to a man. It doesn’t change everyone’s heart eyes, though. Chili peppers galore.
He hosts study sessions in his home on Sundays for his students. He provides snacks and has an open door all day for whoever needs help.
One time, Jack is in town for a game and stops in to say hi. His students collectively lose their shit.
He’s won Professor of the Year honors four years in a row.
hope it’s okay that i’m adding to this:
• the first time he shows up in glasses (bc i like to imagine he wears them from time to time) everyone freaks tf out
• he still plays hockey every now and then ((but doesn’t have as much time as he used to)) so most of his students have seen him in his athletic bro clothes AND his nice suits
• jack gave him his bobblehead giveaway as a joke but what he doesn’t know is that it’s actually sitting on ransom’s desk and he talks to it from time to time
• his students are used to it
• an internal collective sigh comes from all his students whenever he turns around to write on the whiteboard bc Hockey Butt™
• gives his students pie after they finish his exam (s/o to bitty)
• also keeps a pic of him and the team on his desk to remind him of the good ol’ college days
• likes to practice the heavier lectures a day before he gives them after hours
• holster likes to keep him company when he does this and sits in the seats higher up to get a better feel for the lesson
• the Cool Professor™
• uses every other pen colour except red when marking assignments and tests bc he knows how bad it could feel when seeing red ink all over your paper
• his very first day teaching his students thought he would be tough but they soon learn that he’s just like them just more mature
• the background of his laptop is a picture of him and holster that jack took of them a few years back and everyone ‘aw’s when they see it when he connects his laptop to the projector
• likes to walk around the lecture hall, not just stay down in the front and pace ((he’ll even sit on the stairs))
bonus:
• shitty forgot that the schedules change in the second semester and decides to skype/facetime ransom while he’s in the middle of a lecture
• and ransom HAS to pick up the call or else shitty will just keep calling
• “shitty this better be important i’m in the middle of a lecture” and shitty is just. SCREAMING. about Douchey McAsshole today in the courtroom
• and his laptop is still connected to the projector so his students get an eyeful of the one and only shitty knight
• shitty is also now a big hotshot lawyer at this point so mostly everyone and their dog know his name
• ransom just sits down at his desk and let’s shitty rant to him about Douchey McAsshole and in one particular part of the rant/re-telling, his students laugh
• that’s when shitty realizes he probably interrupted ransom’s lesson and apologizes
• ransom eventually just turns the laptop around so it’s facing his students and shitty can see them
• they spend the rest of the lecture time asking shitty questions
• both ransom and shitty give good life advice to the class
• when they’re done with shitty, the first question to come out of their mouth (after getting over their initial shock and amazement) is: “dr. o why did you call [redacted) knight ‘shitty’?”
• remembered as The Great Shitty Lecture of 2kwhatever
Okay but honestly the thing with the red pen reminds me of my one teacher in high school who always used all these different colored pens on our journal assignments. And he wouldn’t write much but he would draw pictures or scribbles. He only used red if it was obvious you put absolutely no effort into the assignment. Everyone thought there was this secret code for what color he used and the scribbles he drew. Like yellow meant your argument was balanced and blue meant you were being too passive. A bunch of circles meant you were talking in circles and needed to refine your point.
Then at the end of the year he told us all that the colors didn’t mean anything, he just didn’t like using red to grade. And the scribbles didn’t necessarily mean anything either, he would just make them in places he wanted you to take a second look at and let you decide if you want to revise it on your own. Or if he thought your journal was good on it’s own he would draw a picture based on your topic just so he knew that he’d looked at it already.
This was kinda like a philosophy class and obviously we’re talking about Ransom the biology professor, but I feel like it’s something he would adopt and make his own.
I just got emotional about the idea of Shitty being all “you don’t understand prejudice because you’re white and a man” toward Holster one day, and my boy Adam Bitkholtz ripping him a new one about the intersectionalities of biphobia, queerphobia, and antisemitism, and just Shitty being completely shook.
Like Shitty was studying something at the library for one of his women’s studies classes and he starts talking about it at the table, and Holster tries to offer some of his own opinions when Shitty shuts him down with that whole ‘you don’t know prejudice" bs and Holster straight up lectures Shitty.
Like a complete 20 min long rant in the middle of the library. And when someone tells them to be quiet, Adam “Too Much” Birkholtz calls him a waspy, straight bitch before storming out of the room in a fury.
Holster makes Shitty read up on Scott Fried as an apology and Shitty sends him a 2,000 word essay MLA format about the duality of being queer and Jewish in America.
Idk about you but I’m still crying at the thought.
Ok but this has me thinking:
Shitty learns the most about social justice and oppression from his friends.
The Gender and Women’s Study program is supposed to be “the tits” according to Shitty, but from the perspective of a privileged White Boy, that doesn’t really say much to me.
Having taken courses at my own university in feminism and women’s studies, they are mostly taught by white cishet men who don’t have any real life experience in the things they teach.
So like he starts waxing poetic about the textbook versions of feminism and intersectionality and all that jazz
And the boys just lay into him.
Like Bitty starts reclaiming some slurs that used to be used against him, and Shitty tells him “you can’t say that” or something like that and bitty just raises an eyebrow at him.
And shit like this just keeps on happening.
He says something ignorant about race to Ransom.
He talks about how great a movie where a white actor plays an Asian character looks and Lardo and Chowder give him a side eye.
Like give me problematique Shitty who learns by making mistakes and having his friends smack that shit outta him.
He has written dozens of apology essays just for his friends.
They keep them in a scrapbook.
Shitty graduates, but the scrapbook stays. One day a taddie says something ignorant, gets one hell of a smackdown, and writes an essay.
It happens enough times that eventually it’s just a known consequence. Pet names in public? Sin Bin donation time. Fuck up your social justice? Submit your essay to the Shitty Knight Essay Scrapbook.
Bass Reeves was so dedicated to the law, he even arrested his own son Bennie for the murder of his wife. Bennie was sentenced to life in prison. With over 3000 arrests, 14 kills, went his entire 32 year career in law enforcement without being shot once.
He was assigned to bring in the notorious female outlaw Belle Starr. Once she got wind who was after her she turned herself into the federal court.
Reeves was one of a few Marshalls who would venture into Indian territory *oklahoma*. After the age of 67 he retired in 1907. He enjoyed his short lived retirement as a police officer in Muskogee Oklahoma, his assigned beat had 0 crime reported until he died at the age of 71 of Bright’s disease.
He was one of the true gun slingers of the west.
I would expect nothing less from a man with such a magnificent mustache
just moving along like everyone else 