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Steve Brusatte, PhD, is an American paleontologist who teaches at the University of Edinburgh. He is the internationally bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.

Opere di Stephen L. Brusatte

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A few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, a tiny individual primate called Purgatorius died in the Purgatory Hill badlands of Montana. Its tiny fossilized teeth led scientists to conclude that it was the species that broke away from its insect-eating cousins and was the first primate. Much, much earlier, in the Carboniferous period of Paleozoic Era, about 330 million years ago, the first synapsids split apart from their reptilian contemporaries and started the lineage that led to mammals.

These are two salient points in Dr. Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. Brusatte, PhD, is an American Paleontologist who teaches at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The book’s notes identify him as the author of the international bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. The paleontology advisor on the Jurassic World film franchise, Brusatte has named more than fifteen new species, including the tyrannosaur “Pinocchio rex” (Qianzhousaurus), the raptor Zhenyuanlong, and several ancient mammals.

This is a book by a scientist for the general public. It’s conversational, not overloaded with jargon, and personal: he declaims his own take on the state of the science, and peppers his insights with idiosyncratic anecdotes about the principal intrepid scientists whose preceded his own. His reverence for these pioneering specialists — his heroines and heroes — never flags.

If you have an interest in the evolution of mammals, I can’t imagine there is a better book or a better author with whom to start.

https://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-rise-and-reign-of-mammals-by-ste...
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LukeS | 13 altre recensioni | Mar 13, 2024 |
Scientists can be scary, sometimes—not unlike a dinosaur. 🦖 (nom nom nom, lots of teeth.) They’re a different culture, a different language, and nation—not unlike the Native American part of the country, or, England. Which is why they defend their turf, and have a survival need to sue you verbally if you step on their green if you’re not a part of their tribe, and why have to whine about the natives and their bad-religion, etc. “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” “In my culture, we like to use mushrooms, you know, psilo-“ “TAKE TWO ASPIRIN, and shut the fuck up.” 🦖

That being said, dinosaurs are pretty cool, so we can’t always hate whitey for hawking the tickets to dinosaur-land, you know. Or ruling over the rest of us, like butlers, you know. Butlers in…. Dinosaur-land. 🦖 💂‍♂️

…. I’m a little negative. 😸

I mean, it’s nice. It’s fun. It’s middle fun. People look up to scientists, you know. And although history has often been easier for me to ‘get’, (although history nerds have our own unique ways of generating negativity, and although history-related things are far more valuable for entertainment in most people’s books than math & science, history can be its own whole extra mile of useless, you know: a long time ago, Frodo, men suffered; men suffered /death/ and were trampled underfoot by…. Dinosaurs! 🦖 Just kidding, by each other 😸), it’s important to see that everything is inter-related, including science & history. History takes places in the natural world, and humans discover science, you know.

Anyway, scientists can do epic elitism sometimes, but I don’t want to unload on them. I’d say “so they don’t unload on religion”, but lately I’ve felt much less connected to the whole superstructure of religion in time and space, despite being religious. But it’s important to be fair, and the ones who write the science books consumed by the portion of the general public that reads science books are often reasonably personable, often (if not always lol) at least as much as religion or history people, you know. The real assholes tend to write in technical journals, or, better—the internet—you know. They’d have no attraction to the field of $10-15 books for people who don’t remember any math or special words, you know.

…. Science is largely concerned with survival, albeit in a slightly hokey non-individual way, which can be nice, and explains why it’s more popular or whatever than philosophy, which (at least in its still-dominant form) is not really concerned with survival at all, in any understandable sense, right. But it’s kinda nice (as much as I’d love to wrangle over whether grass-fed beef is Really as good for the environment as plant food) to kinda put survival to the side for a hot minute, and just talk about dinosaurs—just because dinosaurs are boss, you know.

…. But one problem I kinda have with the book is what could be called ‘reification’, which I guess is the making up of things, the making things “real” and separate by using up mind-stuff, you know. If you know me you know I love classification, but I’d like to think that it’s not a case of my system using me instead of the other way around. “If you lived a zillion million years ago, you might not know the difference between crocodiles and crocodile-dinosaurs. Do you know what the difference between crocodiles and crocodile-dinosaurs are (were)?” Ah, what you say they were, right?…. You see, it’s like mind-stuff; it has nothing to do with the actual experience, the actual lived experience, of an animal—an animal that presumably couldn’t play chess while smoking a pipe, you know.

Scientists can be really weird. Science is supposed to be, and sometimes is, a way of understanding the base layer of life, the root, the simple stuff. The reptile brain, you know. But scientists…. I mean, they tend to come off sounding like the girl who wrote that book Rebecca, who was mildly put off by roses because they reminded her of whores or whatever—too daring, growing roses, you know. Maybe study biochemistry, instead!

…. I wonder what dinosaurs could represent in a ritual, right; what an interesting problem….

Then again—I mean, I was just thinking about Black music, so you’ll have to forgive me this—but I just see in my mind somebody dissing me, like, Epithet, dinosaurs are on their way out: these days it’s all the rap game; you feel me, dog….

🐩

…. Maybe at Samhain, lol….

…. I guess I’m repeating myself—that field guide book was like reading the insides of a robot’s stomach, or something—but it seems like the othering, implicit or intentional, that the Romans had for the Celts, and that the English and Scots had for the Africans and Asians, the scientists have kinda inherited and have (probably also for those other groups, and also for) those who can’t speak Latin/“science”, you know. And if even a writer of popular science decided he wasn’t going to speak Galactic Standard Colonial, you know—just think how easy it would be for the Mexicans if they only had to learn Latin! I’ll call President Biden and Shadow President Hitler and we’ll get those whole border thing straightened out in a jiffy!!—you know, it’s like, we simply won’t let you be in the club, if you don’t defend its borders, basically.

Why, EYE would be upset if someone in France saw “shark-toothed lizards” in French, just like they’d see “We decided to call them” in French, right…. Terror. Sheer terror. The whole Roman Empire has to unite, beat back the future—for science!….

But I’m a cynical bastard, and I guess that’s my mood is soured/biased by the childish “science” posts on Threads, right. Threads: where the children go to vent…. “My daddy says he’s way smarter than your daddy or mommy; he said your freak-based conformity belongs in the past.” I know your dad isn’t the most charitable, personable fucker, but did he really say that? (shrugs) “I don’t know.” (runs)….

I mean, we dissected the inside of the robot’s stomach, and we found the fossilized bone of a Roman Imperial word, right. Sometimes one feels one doesn’t understand, the dinosaurs, or whatever, because of the thick screen of…. I hate to call it “science”, because I know that would really piss people off, you know….

(shrugs) But part of being cynical is that I’m not surprised or offended when people don’t act on what to me would be the reasonable way. Think of Pink Floyd, right. “It’s a crazy world, man…. The really funny thing is, some people think they have the answers…. I look at some people who think they have the answers, I see a fucking squirrel trying to tell the tree how to grow, or something, or tell it how it DOES grow, or whatever…. But, it’s hardly surprising, anymore. Old News, as they say….”

…. But yeah: ok, yeah; it is what it is. They were white men, they were asshats, they did the science, with the intelligence—they found the dinosaurs…. There was once a Black woman I think in the 70s who talked about going to see any movie with a Black cast, even if it was sketchy, because giving Blacks opportunities to her meant supporting them, even if they didn’t optimize those opportunities, right. Most scientists would probs be offended at the comparison, and it’s indeed not exactly the best way to treat the majority, but in my role there is a sort of parallel. “Superior” groups also make mistakes, and letting the scientist have his turn does basically mean hearing about science and its collective delusions as well as its gifts, from history and even from today, right.

…. I know I’m being a little dumb about the children on Threads, but I just can’t wrap my mind around it, you know.

(interfaith picture) (caption) Some people believe all sorts of stupid shit—fuck ‘em, I say.
Anyway, on to my picture of Doctor Swastika Face in his white lab coat; MUCH better than any of those interfaith outfits, right? I wonder which culture did that….
—(universality of math cavil)
—In some cultures people can’t count above three or four~do you respect them as much as white men in lab coats? Do you respect the ‘everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved’ colonialism.
—“I don’t like religion.”
—Translation: “I don’t like you, and I don’t have to think about it.” Am I right?

It’s just like, ~not wanting to learn from the human experience, after all certain point, you know. I don’t get it.
—I am “science”, (cavalier “science vs ‘religion’ “ meme)…. You, however, you’re You. You’re religion. Go fuck yourself.

You know, and it’s like: this is how some people really think. In some romance movie, the first thing out of the scientist’s mouth is going to be some form of, I’m entitled to be a misogynist; I’m a scientist. ~And people just lap it up, right? Show him an un-contacted Amazonian nation, or someone who can’t do math, or anyone—anyone—It’s like, “I’m entitled: you’re not. I know about….” He knows about ANIMALS! Oh, this is rich! He LIKES the animals, does he! He could be a fucking Victorian anthropologist, sent to document the inferior way! The inferior way of the animals…. Etc!

To go back to the scorn for the interfaith photo, it’s like…. “You are wrong about your theory of how the universe started. ~So fuck you; you’re a bad person.~” And fuckers just lap it up, you know; that’s as close to a consensus as we’ve got!

And then you read them talk about their own history, and I hate to rub their faces in the shit, you know—which would be so easy, from what happened back then to how they describe it to how they still construct the world in their minds, and in their manners—but it’s like…. I mean, do you see the fucking disconnect?…. I realize they’re trying to recruit normies, power corrupts, the crap from previous civilizations leads to crap in ours, because the trauma never truly healed…. But how do you get so fucking stupid, you know? “You have no value unless you can do calculus; I’m valuable because I know about (wait for it!) LIZARDS!” 🦎

You know: like, “And then we dug up the dinosaur bones; and from that summer on, everything changed for us, our consciousness was transformed…. We were filled with gladness, and we radiated kindness, ever after….”

Until Doctor Swastika Face met an Italian; then he had a meltdown. If only the Nazis could have come to some sort of understanding with the other European ethnicities—you know, like…. Aren’t we all in this, together?

I hate to rub it in, you know. I want to like the children, you know—the Threads children, the brain-children, all the children, really…. But they’ve got to meet me halfway, maybe, you know. It’s like, if Allll the children are gonna run around acting more entitled than all the other little ducklings, and are just gonna give you this blank stare when you suggest that maybe they’re part of the human story, you know, the story of Earth…. “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance away from his body.” “Oh, I don’t know anyone named Mr. Duffy. Was he (religious/female/Palestinian/a witch/fat/stupid/etc.)? I’m not like that. I’m not involved in all that, you know….”

—It’s like, no no no children. You need to learn something….
—Well I don’t want to learn crystal healing.
—So don’t fucking learn crystal healing, but what you’re doing is not working.
—You’re…. Other. You’re, weird. I was born in 2177; I don’t talk to old people. I only talk to scientists.
—I’m done. Go fuck up the earth, children. Go hurt each other. It’s your karma, right? Go on—fuck off!

…. But yeah, believe it or not, I read this book because the Mother within me wanted to nurture the scientist with my plant milk, right. (Hermes is the Mother.) And 98.5% of the time it’s not bad, although it’s easy to smile in a patronizing way at his 150% abstract take on the history of life, right. But yeah, sometimes the Mother gets a little pissy; she needs a drink—a metaphorical drink, although alkies with their metaphorical drinks can be a trip, right. My mother is an alcoholic, you see. A very cerebral alcoholic, as is actually pretty typical. Incidentally not a scientist, right. She actually has a lot of conspiracy theories about doctors, right. It’s like, C’mon, mom: some of them aren’t actually THAT much more neurotypical and normie-freaky than the people tailgating you on the road, right. (She also hates driving.) But yeah, it’s easy to smile in a patronizing way when my mom talks. When it’s my birthday or whatever, she quotes from books (she’s shy about putting anything in her own words, lol) about the meaning of life, the evolution of consciousness, and how I’m the best, best, BEST ABCDXYZ, etc—actually, that’s pretty standard operating procedure, but it was my birthday, I got like, three cards like that. No money, though, yet. She either gives me a lot of money—way more than my dad—or none, because she’s flat broke, right. And she cooks food for me, which I’m to eat even if the world fucking ends, right. Yeah….

Yeah, I smile in a patronizing way, when people…. Brain, their way through life, you know….

…. But yeah:

“Children, this chapter in the history of Life begins with the Abstract Period, continues on through the Impersonal Period, and ends with the Funny Name Period. The—oh, what’s this? Oh, plant milk! This is the nourishing kind! I’m so happy!”

Got you covered 👌

…. It’s actually probably not as good as a NatGeo magazine dinosaur issue, ~really~.

All the art of science writing, it would seem, the full flower of their philosophy, is to take something that just ~looks~ impressive, because what it ~is~ at the level of ~being~, and turn it into a meh catalogue of facts, dates, stats, and Latin, basically…. I fully realize that this isn’t the sort of “good” science, of that guy that would snort, like, I saw this book in Barnes & Noble! It’s garbage!—But it’s funny, because his shadow looms over the book, you know….

“What an interesting dinosaur statistic. Let’s ponder that.” And again, Western science is NOT all bunk, but it’s funny, the average doctor is like: “Your health is this series of statistics. This stat is particular is a problem, and—put that dinosaur book away, dammit, while I’m talking to you!”

…. I don’t want to say it’s bad, exactly. Scientists sorta say, “I promise you one day we will know we were wrong”, which has turned into a meme on Threads, you know, how open-minded they are, although in practice it’s more like, “I know I’m probably not 100% right—but don’t surprise me….” Or, “…. But about these forty things, don’t you tell me that….” Unless you want to watch Doctor Who in real life, right. (That guy had an anger issue.) It becomes kinda, “Admit me and my friends are wrong, now, in our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances!”…. But yeah, it’s certainly entertaining to watch Practical Mind chew through totally impractical problems, you know…. And also, Science, as an institution, or perhaps almost as a being, requires change; it wants to evolve, always…. So I guess that the scientists will have to keep up, eventually.

…. Picking apart the science of sci-fi movies is VERY sci-fi. It’s like loyalty to the sci-fi peanut gallery, you know…. I guess that’s mean, but I don’t really care about men’s feelings, lol.

For I am not a man, but a duck. 🦆

…. I realize I’m probably harping on the issue of personality, but I think it’s funny how every scientist is like a Great Guy, you know. He’s: (a) great, and (b) a guy: so that makes him, a Great Guy!! (Tell him what he won, Betty!!). I know this isn’t kosher, but it’s like when Christian writers want you to think that every bookish Christian/pious mother/pastor is a Christian Great Person, you know. It’s like…. How could it be any other way, right? (Good news, Comrades: our dear father the Revolutionary Leader has been returned to power by his loving supporters with a smashing electoral result of….). Right? It goes without saying…. And sometimes scientists are Sheldon Cooper—isn’t that great? I love that show! ~Bro, I like Downfall parodies, but I’m not voting for Voldemort, so that our descendants can have better comedic material to work with right…. To use an extreme example. And if you questioned him about it, I feel like he’d say it didn’t matter—which isn’t a credit to him; but it’s like when people say, What’s a little money between friends? And you’re like, That’s very generous. Thank you for your support. And they’re like, No it’s only a little money…. So you give it to me. And you’re like, No…. No, you said…. And they get all angry like: It isn’t that much money!!

And then the screen goes dark, and then they get lit up in cop car lights, with a bloody baseball bat, and they’re all: It just should have been a little money between friends! It shouldn’t have ended like this: I’m telling ya!

~I’m a strange person.

…. There is some interesting personal memoir and scientist-biography, you know—it’s not really a “chess” book, you know—but I still have no idea what it was like to be a dinosaur, just that people give them certain ridiculous names, and estimate their size to be whatever. I’ll really have to think about whether it’s worth it to read more science books, if this is as good as it gets, you know.

…. If you’ll permit the expression, I’d be the last one to suggest that the scientists never do any good, although there is that screen of language there, usually—perhaps ironically, right. Like in ShopRite they promote that free medication that I probably would have called Overdose Buster, since it stops “drug” users from dying, right…. I mean, it probably means something more polite than that, even in the Greek: I don’t know what they called it, some damn thing, right…. And yeah, I hope this doesn’t trigger like, the City of Athens Public Library staff or whatever, but I feel like if I was a prehistoric reptile, I wouldn’t call myself these damn names, you know…. So yeah. It is what it is…. IT, itself. (That’s a joke, lol.)

…. The joy that we can find through arbitrary, confusing, abstract systems of classification that mean very little to more or less everyone “is probably the single most important fact ever discovered by dinosaur paleontologists”.

😎

…. I mean, certainly we can’t exclude biology from evolution, but it’s one thing to say that, another to reduce the whole thing to arbitrary, confusing, abstract systems of classification that mean basically nothing, really….

Philosophers are rough, too.

(scientist) According to the arbitrary, confusing, abstract classification that all of the important people have agreed upon, this seagull is a dinosaur.
(philosopher) But we can’t accept the testimony of the senses that there’s a seagull at all. We must rely only on Reason….

(shrugs) But if I call the seagull a god in seagull form, I’m crazy. (jazz hands) Ooo…. People are going native…. They’re CRAY-Z….!

Ok.

…. And we certainly do begin intellectualizing the country’s children VERY early, you know. (I take an interest in young people because when I’m an 80 year old man my doctor might be some smart young kid, right.) Like, “The Giver” is apparently still pretty big, and it seems to be to be so because it fills the overlap of the masses’ “I am afraid of the elites (although I want them to like me)” and the intellectuals’ “I am afraid that I do not feel enough fear”; it’s also kinda the overlap between anti-communism, cynicism about the public good, and general egghead belief/stance towards life, you know…. It’s like wow, three bullshit ideologies for the price of one: (commercial cartoon) That’s…. Great!

And yeah, we also probably teach kids that birds are actually dinosaurs, right. (Unless it’s a school where we just have the teachers point handguns at them all day. Actually, even in some of the advanced classes, sometimes it feels like if you miss 25% of an answer, the egghead is going to snap and plug you in the chest, right.) We certainly teach them that before we teach them about meditation, right. Stress-reduction and learning about emotions are something we consider giving you once you’ve been identified as being at risk of getting a criminal record, basically…. Certainly nobody’s gonna fucking teach you about dinosaur emotions in science class, you know. They don’t care about them, and it’s not important if they can’t find out, basically…. I remember in one of those crazy Gogol short stories about two crazy Russian fuckers bickering and suing each other over some goddamn crazy thing, the last line was like, “It’s a crazy world, gentlemen!” I always thought that was a great line.

…. Obviously this has little to do with Steve himself, but in one sense it’s obviously quite terrible that the military government of China—I don’t know what communism is supposed to be and I doubt the Chinese government cares much; in their case it basically just means “not a democracy”, right—ordered this fellow to study dinosaurs, although clearly we wouldn’t have heard about him if it hadn’t worked out. Blind individualism in the West obviously doesn’t work out sometimes, of course—people blunder about and when it doesn’t work out, instead of reflecting that they don’t know what they want or how to find out what they want, they assume that it’s because the system is corrupt, right: which it surely is~ but that might not be the best explanation for their own failure, perhaps. But yeah: imagine living in a country run by science-military-bureaucrats, and they just arbitrarily pick a career for you at random because they can and because they have the science-military-bureaucrat “life is random” thing, right. I mean, if we were in the future, maybe it would be done by blind-individualism-choice and maybe it wouldn’t, right: maybe you could have the expert or whoever do a tarot/runes/psychological profile/giant math equation thing, perhaps based on your preference, and they could assign you a job based on something other than blind science-military-bureaucrat crap, right. (shrugs) But for the next 300 years or whatever, people will be too paranoid to let anyone other than themselves ruin their lives, right.

And as for the USA/the West, yes, I’m sure that there are scientists who drink beer. Thank you, Steve, for…. I mean, this is an incongruous put down for me, because I think that at times ads can be entertaining and even send value messages and obviously publicize deals and stuff, but: I feel like Steve is selling me a bill of goods with the whole “scientists who drink beer and are cooler than ever” thing. Scholars usually don’t value money that much, but that doesn’t mean they don’t ever sell you a bill of goods, you know…. “Study the Lesser Subdivision Sub-genre Field, and nothing in your life will ever go wrong again…. You’ll study meaningful points of obscure data, with neurotic yet brainy people: you’ll drink coffee at midnight and curse out your work colleagues and possibly your romantic partners, whoops! I mean, you’ll be drinking beer at the club, with all the other geniuses with a drinking—ah, no, no, that won’t happen, either…. So, yes, children! Study knowledges! Use the information! You’ll get a cape like mine: and you’ll be glad, you did.” 😉

…. Although it is kinda funny to imagine how they make decisions like that in Beijing, you know. “Hmm: I don’t like you; and I don’t like dinosaurs—so why don’t ~you~ go study ~dinosaurs~…. Maybe you could do it in New York, which is a city I’ve heard bad things about….”

And unlike say, feng shui, or something, there’s really NOTHING specifically Chinese about that, right. It’s just the…. generic bullshit philosophy of life, really.

…. “Evolution made birds from dinosaurs.”

This is an interesting sentence. I’m not trying to cavil at the science—if the biology/natural history/whatever this is, scientists tell me that there were birds that changed and became dinosaurs, then that’s fine. It’s actually kinda funny when religious people cavil at evolution, both because they don’t really have any goal except angering and pissing off scientists, In The Name of Goodness, and because they’re basically caviling with the scientists, I think, because evolution is science’s Big Strange Enormous Concept, you know—even to think that there’s even been anything for a million years, or even much, much longer, when we’ve only had things written down for—you know what I mean? Evolution is bigger than our own things that ~we~ have made. But then why would scientists want to, or be motivated to ponder, the Big Strange Enormous Concepts of religion, spirituality, philosophy—say, life after death, if their own ideas just get tossed over the side as being, well, weirder than going to church, basically?

But these “evolution made X from Y” or ~evolution (as a noun that takes a verb) sentences are interesting, philosophically. Now, of course if you’re a scientist who’s a caviler, you say, Fuck language, fuck the humanities, fuck average people, fuck religion, fuck philosophy—none of that shit matters; if I have to use a different grammatical construction to avoid thinking about meaning/preserve meaninglessness from the awful gaping chasm of meaning and philosophical truth, then that’s what I’ll do, right….

But it’s like, if evolution makes dinosaurs into something else, then evolution is an actor. Is Evolution a Being?…. Yes, if Evolution made birds, then how can Evolution not be God, basically….

(shrugs) I think it’s all about balance. On the one hand, I don’t think that the material world is trivial, untrue, or, illusory. But then, perhaps evolution is not ~purely~ a function of biology, that was born in meaninglessness, that dies in meaninglessness, while equations quivered in a beam of light…. lol.

…. And yeah: you don’t have to call science a religion if you don’t want to, if that doesn’t resonate with you, right. What is and isn’t “religion” is ambiguous, and choice plays the dominant role, as it should with almost any label, you know. You wouldn’t call me a warlock, because “warlock” is a bullshit word basically used only in “Charmed”, or something like that; I’m a witch. But yeah: when scientists decide what evolution means in terms of their stance towards life in the most general sense, that’s a choice, “arbitrary” in the factual sense, and largely determined by the choices of other scientists of their own time and affinity. It’s a culture, not a fact, you know. However you feel about or define culture or this culture or that culture, how biological evolution makes you feel about your life is a choice, not a fact, largely shaped by others in the community, and is therefore basically cultural rather than factual. Where a fossil was found or what temperature it was when it was excavated are factual matters, about which there’s right or wrong, feelings don’t help you get it, etc., and could interfere—but not everything is like that, and “but everything that MATTERS, IS like that”, is a cultural choice.

…. In a sense, it’s not bad writing, but it’s just, ~way~ too enchanted by death, you know.

—Dinosaur emotions?
No.
—Dinosaur mating?
No.
—Dinosaur childhood?
No.
—Dinosaur…. death?
(Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at TV meme)
THAT’S RIGHT—THE DINOSAURS DIED OUT.

~ (smug smile) And now I know what we need to teach the children….

~~ Yeah, let’s see: I feel the cull of the philosophy (free sample) books was “worse”, but we can defs get rid of anything about dinosaurs, or extinctions….

…. But yeah: I don’t think I want dinosaurs to be part of my religion. (They seem now yet like another dubious aspect of my childhood, or the common childhood, right.) With possible slight to Uruz, the rune associated with the aurochs, a kind of wild ox that died out a few centuries after the runes came into being—if what we can say about your group basically is: 1. They’re big. 2. They all died~ it’s like, Ah yes—the macho-morbid axis, around which academia revolves….

I feel like dinosaur books and extinction books and even dead species books tend to be kinda like rune bags with five or six Uruz’s, and a couple of duplicate Nauthiz’s and Isa’s, and with Berkana missing and Inguz missing, you know….

I mean, I’m just starting to feel a certain ambivalence about the utility of natural history, you know. I know how Wunjo feels and how Nauthiz feels, if I wanted to I could create playlists for them—I suppose the average radio playlist is a sort of Wunjo-Nauthiz playlist, right…. But if we don’t know how dinosaurs felt: if we just are supposed to be all, Bro: they were huge. What else do we need to know?…. It’s like, What are we doing? Life has moved on, right.

…. (after I’ve moved on to the activity after my next activity or two)

Ah yes, “Songs About Jane”: I feel like I was listening to this maybe ten years after it was released, so like the early 2010s, basically…. I was such a fool for music, but I forget, some of the music I listened to actually was pretty pleasurable—I actually listened to ~albums~, too; actually I bought them, lol…. But yes, the musicianship I listened to was often quite good, it seems to me…. But I was quite often not happy, lol—far, far more unhappy, than happy: Nauthiz, and Wunjo: I think at some point, I couldn’t tell them apart anymore, lol…. Yes, if I had been listening with ads, I would have responded to that Reese’s candy ad several million years before the Avalon Flooring one, right…. I mean, sometimes I saw symbolism in things, inappropriately, but certainly if I saw the ad as for ~flooring~, I would have been like, Ah: no….

But yeah, musicianship is math: a good band makes those damn numbers ~sing~, but sometimes, if it’s all Nauthiz and no Wunjo, or practically stabbing yourself with Nauthiz to get your sonic Wunjo fix, right…. In the end, life requires balance: sometimes more than mere particular excellence, right….

Don’t listen to whole albums, in a sitting, right. If I were to listen to the whole Jane album—and I used to listen to one, after another, after another—that would: I mean, I was gonna listen to three songs, this is number four; and I’m ~healed~, right: gonna stay that way….

But yeah: She will…. Leave for work; she will…. Commute to the office, to-day….

Hooo. Success.

And yeah, the “cool” scientists try to be like, We have drinks at the pub after the digging is done for the day, ~and it’s like, yeah, impulse is one sort of thing, and mental control over numbers sorta goes with it, right…. And understand me: it’s your choice. You don’t have to tell me how many village Christians and naive religionists are out there to experience things for you, just sign on the dotted line….

But yeah: show me a scientist, in crusty mode or cool mode, who values balance over mere particular excellence, and we’ll be looking at somebody who’s bucked the example of their peers…. Not always the most valued sort of lass or fellow, someone who can do that, either—not even among those who, KNOW….

…. But there’s a sucker for books born every minute, or at least every couple of hours, lol—maybe I’ll read about the natural history of humans and mammals, right. I don’t think that I’ll read another Steve book, though. There’s nothing quite like a cool scientist that’s not cool…. Unless maybe it’s a cool Christian that’s not cool~ Ie, Past Ted. 👌

But yeah, maybe VSI: Human Evolution; VSIs are great for science and philosophy…. I know I deleted at least one philosophy VSI in a purge…. Imagine my shock at learning that just reading Epicurus-y books doesn’t solve the life-avoidance problems of philosophy…. Was that a line from Casablanca? ~Shocked, shocked, to find life avoidance in the philosophy department…. I mean, reading Epictetus was useful at one point; It’ll be interesting to re-read him, eventually, having read “Me Before You”, right…. But yeah, If I were the sister, you know, it would have been the same. “…. How the hell do you deal with that?” “You know, I’m the smart one in the family; I get it…. But I have no idea, sis. No fucking clue.”

Of course, I’m incurable, you know. “Now I have to read philosophy books, with my new mindset that the point of life is NOT to observe and avoid: yes, yes…. Sméagol forms a plan…. Yes, my…. Precious…..”

And yeah:

1. They were big
2. They all died.

(bows) Thank you. Thank you. (walks away) (people throw roses, cheer) “Encore….. encore….!”

(laughing backstage, smiling into the camera) Buggers weren’t listening; they’re all dead. Ergo: no encore….

~ Yeah.

…. After-note:

(Cool Scientist Steve) Hey, let’s talk about dinosaurs. And we can have music—the kids still like Maroon 5, right?
—Or I could just read the lyrics of “Harder to Breathe”, right. (Proceeds to do so).
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
“There must be an art of singing so that parts of it, at the very least, aren’t understood.”
“I’m gonna go meditate, guys.”
“It was such a great song…. It’s like, the devil, though. So to speak, I mean.”
“Kinda reminds me of anxiety, now….”

(everyone leaves)

Don’t try to be cool, Steve. It’s not cool.
—I can be crusty, too.
Yeah…. I know you can. Listen: I know you’re going through a hard time right now…. But I want you to know. Things are gonna be ok.
—I think everything might die, though.
Yeah, you know what…. Listen, we can talk later, ok? Do you want to recycle, or something? Is that it? I have one of those For Dummies books; it’s about~
—I have a plane to catch, actually. Bye. (door)
Yeah, ok…. But yeah: Pace “Harder to Breathe”, sometimes it is ~necessary~ to “give up”, so to speak….
… (altro)
 
Segnalato
goosecap | 60 altre recensioni | Mar 9, 2024 |
NF book written by a working paleontologist, pop science in tone and style but geared toward an adult audience.

The number of advances in the field of paleontology in the past twenty years, i.e., readily accessible & more sophisticated technology, discoveries in China and new mathematical/statistical modeling have opened up a lot of “secrets” and corrected a lot of mistakes about the studies into the Mesozoic Era. From the end of the Permian Era (before dinosaurs) to the violent end of the Cretaceous period, the author brings color and life to a time of great geological upheavals and an incredibly diverse set of dinosaurs and their cousins.… (altro)
1 vota
Segnalato
Tanya-dogearedcopy | 60 altre recensioni | Feb 11, 2024 |
An easy to read book about how dinosaurs became a dominant kind of animal in their time, and how changes in their environment eventually killed them off, apart from the lines that developed into modern birds.
½
 
Segnalato
queen_ypolita | 60 altre recensioni | Dec 31, 2023 |

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Opere
9
Utenti
2,483
Popolarità
#10,330
Voto
4.1
Recensioni
80
ISBN
80
Lingue
10

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