House centipedes are entirely harmless. I would be happy and honored to see one skittering around in my home. They eat harmful things.

Tbh it’s more that science teachers are broke lol - one of the most inspirational/effective/but also probably violated the Geneva convention training program taught me explicitly - being a teacher means there is no thirty minute lunch and the best lessons are made with shit you get from the dumpsters at Home Depot.

Unironically yes. As a male STEM student, I had a much easier time finding a study group, I didn’t feel singled out and isolated in my classes, and people took the things I said seriously.

It’s like magic when I go to the doctor - the second they find out a uterus, it’s like their whole body language changes.

When I was a freshman before transition, I had a guy save my number and call me like 2 years after we had an intro engineering class (we spoke maybe once?) to ask me out on a date.

He’s already on an island in the middle of the ocean that’s so remote it wasn’t even occupied when the Europeans took it. St. Helena is where they sent Napoleon to try to keep him away.

Weird thing I’ve noticed:

Logs are taught in high school. Absolutely no one seems to remember what they are after the unit test, much less high school. I’ve even reminded other math instructors about how to use them.

Why do people have such a hard time learning to use and understand logs?

I love this comic, and it’s going to replace my weird “let’s talk about how this makes the distance between us and Alpha Centauri, and us and Earendil easier to understand” bit.

The Rock Yard at NASA Houston was used for for testing out the Mars rover - lots of volcanic rocks to model Mars. Looked really fucking cool to see a couple of interns drive around on a “fake” Mars.

Methane at least breaks down faster than CO2. Heavier, so stronger effects, but at least the CH4 breaks down after a decade or so instead of centuries.

Pretty much. We set off several positive feedback loops and punctured the equilibrium, and nature’s going to have to find a new one. Whether or not that can support life as we know it know is up in the air.

(I didn’t even mention phytoplankton die offs - a lot of the oxygen produced on earth is from photosynthesis happening in the ocean - not from terrestrial plants. So you also have less of a carbon sink in that process as well.)

When I was a child, long road trips would leave the front grill of our car caked with bugs. When I’d hunt for dandelions with my siblings, leaning close to the ground revealed a world just teeming with activity.

Now - where are the bugs? Especially with how difficult it is to identify insect species, we’ve probably lost hundreds of thousands of bugs that were never named or studied. How critical were those bugs to their ecosystems?

It’s difficult to motivate people to care about species of phytoplankton or ants though. Even the “save the bees” thing got twisted into a celebration of non-indigenous species that were brought in for agricultural purposes (wasps are critical for pollination, but not as cute as honey bees I guess.) The more you study ecology, the more you realize how complicated and interlocking it is, the more you realize that most human beings cannot be brought to care without substantial changes to our education system.

Ocean acidification occurs because the ocean serves as a carbon sink. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forms weak carbonic acid in ocean water. The ocean has historically been slightly basic, and as it inches towards a neutral pH, it makes it impossible for things like oysters to form their shells.

One big problem is that it’s one of the biggest carbon sinks. It’s keeping that greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. However - as you might notice if you leave a can of Coke out on a hot day - the solubility of gases in liquids decreases when it’s hotter. The world heats up because of greenhouse gasses, less greenhouse gasses can be stored in the ocean and re-enter the atmosphere, which heats the world up more…

Then we also have the lovely “ice albedo” positive feedback loop - dark ocean water absorbs more of the suns radiation, sea ice reflects more of it. Sea ice melts as earth heats up, exposing dark ocean which absorbs more heat and melts more ice….

The odorous black house ant is pretty common in the US. The smell is pretty pronounced if you crush them - grad student I was doing field work under randomly shouted “come smell my finger!” and yeah - it’s very much like blue cheese.

Charity can serve as a means of control. This is way Republicans advocate against social services.

The government cannot mandate that you attend church to receive EBT. A church can require you attend a service to feed you.

I’ve heard from friends in Utah, for example, that access to many social services is through the church. Friend was trying to rescue a girl from FLDS - pretty much all job training/housing required she play along with mainstream Mormonism.

Orgs like the Salvation Army are known to require trans people to detransition to recieve services as well.

Another benefit is the rent seeking - Goodwill is a good example. You can still turn a profit with the right combination of PR, and tying access to services based on things that’ll make you profit (Goodwill “provides employment” for disabled people - they are legally allowed to pay them far below minimum wage.)

It’s the two pillars of the contemporary Right - control and grifting.