• mineralfellow@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    My doctoral school in planetary science had students from a mix of academic backgrounds, so we all had to take astronomy as geology classes. We all went together across town to the observatory to meet the somewhat elderly astronomy professor. When he opened his computer, the screen was filled with hardcore porn. We all sat in silence as he closed it and opened his presentation. He then started his talk, which featured a classical painting of the milky way coming from the breast of Hera. When the picture was on the screen he looked at it for a while, then said “mmm, I like this picture.”

  • HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    name their whole taxonomic class of animals after glands that produce milk

    Wait fuck this hurts my brain we’re in the titty class? Holy shit Jiggly jugs, batman!

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 days ago

      Milktopia, dominated by mammals obsessed with milk?

      Not quite right. How about:

      Homotropolis, dominated by homosapians obsessed with homosex?

      Closer, but what about:

      Earth, dominated by earthlings obsessed with earth?

      Fairly accurate, but ever since we moved away from agrarian societies, we don’t care nearly enough about earth. Unless of course, we consider our obsession with exclusive control of territory and property, in which case it totally checks out.

    • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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      5 days ago

      That would be the most understandable portion of the whole shindig. Fungi are a major idea (and everywhere in science fiction) for how to deal with interstellar travel because of their unique niche in the various cycles of life. I would bet an alien species that can travel through the vast reaches of space would also be familiar with using biotechnology.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        23 hours ago

        but fungi aren’t inherent to cheese lol, most cheese doesn’t have more than an ambient amount of fungus in it

        • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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          1 hour ago

          It’s not about fungi making cheese. We know that bacteria are the largest component of the microbial community making cheese. The point is that aliens traveling through the enormous, barren-of-everything wastes would likely know how to use biotechnology, such as fungi and bacteria, to replicate the life cycles found on their homeworld. In ours, it’s fungi breaking down organic matter, bacteria turning nitrogen into nitrates/nitrites, cyanobacteria turning carbon dioxide into reduced organic (carbon) compounds, etc., etc. In theirs, it could be strange silicon/phosporus/sulfur forms (unlikely, due to a bunch of esoteric but important rules about the chemistry of those elements) being processed by microbial life. After all, do you think a single celled microbe, or a relatively giant multi-cellular organism will arise first? If life there is anything like here, the single-celled organisms will be the foundation of any multi-cellular organism’s environment, each contribution of the microbes shaping the biochemical pathways that the larger organisms will use merely by providing building blocks and affecting the environment, ala the sudden explosion of atmospheric, gaseous oxygen when microbes began to explore the pathways of photosynthesis.