c/196 has 1 rule: if you arrive, you have to post something before you leave. People have taken to putting the word “rule” in their titles to show their compliance, but it’s not strictly necessary.

In such a case, we would simply need to look backward in history until we find an ancestor that doesn’t meet the chicken criteria. Fowl as a clade were separated from other bird clades before the K-T Extinction Event, and many such species before the event had teeth, which means they weren’t chickens.

chicken would also be able to defined as it’s ancestor

This isn’t the case, and there’s a mathematical theorem describing this called the Intermediate Value Theorem. Basically, if you have a function describing a line you can draw without picking up your pencil, at some point along that line the value takes on every value on that line. Makes sense, right?

If I draw a line separating Chicken-birds from Not-chicken-birds, and show the evolutionary path leading from non-chicken to chicken, at some point it crosses that line. We don’t have to know where that point is, we just know it crosses the line at some point.

At that point, wherever it is, we have a bird that meets the criteria of “chicken” hatching from an egg laid by a bird that doesn’t.

Besides, this is all pretty moot. We actually know when and where chickens originated. They originated about 3000 years ago in China and India after being domesticated from Southeast Asian Red Junglefowl.

Both.

Tolkien constructed an actual language for use in his works, and the gibberish you see on the keyboard is that language.

Man in Black : All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.

Vizzini : But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black : You’ve made your decision then?

Vizzini : Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

Man in Black : Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Vizzini : Wait till I get going! Now, where was I?

Man in Black : Australia.

Vizzini : Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder’s origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black : You’re just stalling now.

Vizzini : You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? You’ve beaten my giant, which means you’re exceptionally strong, so you could’ve put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you’ve also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black : You’re trying to trick me into giving away something. It won’t work.

Vizzini : IT HAS WORKED! YOU’VE GIVEN EVERYTHING AWAY! I KNOW WHERE THE POISON IS!

Man in Black : Then make your choice.

Vizzini : I will, and I choose… what in the world can that be?

[Vizzini gestures up and away from the table. The Man in Black looks backwards. Vizzini swaps the goblets]

Man in Black : What? Where? I don’t see anything.

Vizzini : Well, I- I could have sworn I saw something. But no matter.

[Vizzini tries to hold back laughter]

Man in Black : What’s so funny?

Vizzini : I’ll tell you in a minute. First, let’s drink. Me from my glass, and you from yours.

[Vizzini and the Man in Black drink]

Man in Black : You guessed wrong.

Vizzini : You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” - but only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…

This is a terrible position to take. Anyone can be educated.

The thing is, nobody likes being flat-out told they’re wrong, and with the way arguments on the internet go, that’s all that will ever happen.

Most of my friends are heavily conservative, but I’ve learned how to have productive conversations with them about issues, and it’s almost always “This is how it benefits you if it were different.”

It’s difficult sometimes, but it’s worth doing, and it’s important to understand that the guy you’re talking to isn’t the enemy. He’s just another dude.

I agree with the overall sentiment. The money you’re saving in cat food is only going to lead to vet bills later on.

I’ll fight you on whether or not chonkers can be cute, though.

Their logic:

If something is clear, it is easily understood. Thus, “clearly don’t understand” is a contradiction in terms, making it an oxymoron.

My understanding, however limited, is that “property” means something different in this context. Essentially, it means things like real estate and businesses, things that make money. You can own food, clothes, a TV, watches, a car, whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t make money.

If you wanted to start a business, you probably could, and you wouldn’t need to pay for it. The State would own the business, and you would be paid to run that business. This absolves you of all the risk associated with it, and you get paid more than a grocery store shelf stocker because you’re doing a harder job, and thus demonstrating greater ability.

If a country ever implements true communism it will experience extreme brain drain and be left with only the most unskilled people.

I’m not sure where you got this idea from. I’m not particularly informed on the subject, but when I look up the dictionary definition of communism, I get this:

a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

Emphasis mine. If people with more ability are paid more, then they shouldn’t be flocking out of the country, right?

Oh, I misunderstood, I didn’t realize in this scenario you were asking them if they were nonbinary. The linguistic answer is everything in Spanish defaults to masculine.

I, personally, would treat it the same as I treat the pronoun game here in the US, because it’s essentially the same thing: I start with whichever one jumps out at me and accept correction if necessary, because they are the ones who made the decision to make their grammatical identifiers differ from convention. It’s not my responsibility to know it ahead of time.

If they want to be a dick about it, I now know they’re not someone I want to spend time around anyway.

No binario is masculine, because it ends in -o. To make it feminine, it is changed to no binaria, ending in -a. Therefore, no binaria is feminine.

There are neutral adjectives that end in something else, such as verde (green) or feliz (happy), but most adjectives do not have a neutral form.

It sounds stupid, but the chatbot is actually right. The person saying the phrase would pick one based on how they view or present themselves. It’s not a disparagement to say that a non-binary individual has a gender with respect to Spanish grammatical structure, because quite literally everything does. Chairs are feminine, days are masculine, etc.

Kind of. They only have 2 legs, so they’re not as stable as a traditional mount, but they get up to 300 pounds and can run almost 45 mph, so their legs are certainly strong enough to carry a 120-ish pound woman slowly around a safe enclosure. It’s not really practical, but it can be done.

Ana my axe!

I think what happened is Musk wanted to change the signage, and gave them 2 days to do it. While they were working on it, the cops showed up and stopped them because no permits, so they put the original signage back. They report back to the Chief Twit, and he’s just like, “All I’m hearing is you have 4 hours to go and my sign isn’t up yet.”

There’s an incorrect assumption here that makes the whole math portion meaningless. That assumption is that ancestors must be unique.

In reality, you can have two parents each having two children, and then those two children having two children, etc.

Hell, you can do it with two initial parents, and then each generation only having 1 child, which then mates with its parents, and then the family tree looks kind of like a braid.

So, in reality, you only need 12 ancestors to be the 12th generation. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Actually, I was referring to ‘it.’

People don’t like using it for people, because it’s traditionally only really used for objects (“It’s a chair!” ) or creatures where the gender isn’t identifiable or doesn’t matter (“It’s a bear!”) , but that’s the exact use case here.

A nonbinary person is a creature whose gender is either not identifiable or doesn’t matter.

People just decided that it meant nonbinary people were objects, when in reality we use it for objects because they were the only truly nonbinary concepts we had.

Yeah, but you’re using it to mean “I don’t know which pronoun to use.” This is a different meaning than what’s being describes here.

What’s being described here is a person who decided that they don’t want to be referred to as he or she, and has chosen to make themselves plural instead of using the singular nongendered pronoun already present in English.

Since that is a grammatical error, and this is the internet, I am obligated to ridicule this person, regardless of how well their meaning is conveyed.

/s, by the way.

This is blatantly false. Chuck Norris wasn’t born, he got tired of wearing his mother.