Yeah, evolving lungs ended up clearing the way to make use of the much more plentiful oxygen in the air compared to what is dissolved in water. Amphibians and reptiles have pretty low metabolisms, but birds and mammals basically evolved endothermy (aka warm bloodedness), probably in support of much higher muscular power output. Ectotherms (aka cold blooded animals) have metabolisms that are correlated to temperature, which means they can’t exert themselves as well when it’s cold. Endothermy allowed animals to be warm all the time, and therefore use higher muscular power output in any environment, especially sustained.

That means mammals and birds were able to cover more distance, and survive in places where reptiles and amphibians can’t, and all the advantages that carries.

This article estimates at a 40kg sailfish uses about 2.7 megajoules per day of energy when hunting. That’s about 650 kcal.

An 80kg human weighs about twice as much and needs about 3 times the energy, without even exertion.

Warm blooded animals spend a lot of energy just maintaining body temperature. Plus water doesn’t have very much oxygen in it, compared to the atmosphere.

There’s not enough oxygen in water to support our metabolisms, even if we had gills.

Fish are adapted to conserve and use less oxygen, from slower metabolic rates to more options for anaerobic respiration that doesn’t poison oneself from within.

It feels so real in how disappointing the experience becomes for the straight characters.

This hits the nail on the head. It’s funny because of the point of view of the actual participants.

The funny thing about this thread is that there are so many comments essentially agreeing with the central premise of the sketch, that it’s relatable and disorienting when you stumble onto some kind of established fandom and can’t seem to keep up with why it’s popular or what is or isn’t “part of it.” The popularity is confusing in itself, and the need to dissect the lore (as OP is doing, perhaps even unintentionally following the sketch itself) distracts from the original purpose of going there to be entertained.

In other words, the sketch is funny and relatable exactly for the same reasons why much of the audience doesn’t find it funny and relatable.

$83 billion per month is almost $1 trillion per year. That sounds about right.

What are the oceans if not one giant salt lake?

Deseret can have a little coastline, as a treat.

Anywhere strangers tend to be around each other long enough to where small talk might be a welcome distraction: waiting in lines for something, sitting at a community table or bar/counter with mixed groups (especially while waiting for the rest of your respective friend groups to show up), sitting next to each other at a public event like live sports or a concert with downtime, volunteer events where you might be set up next to strangers doing the same thing, etc.

It’s easier when there’s a natural end to the interaction (your turn in line, the start of the sporting event), too.

Smartphones and headphones have made it harder, but there are still opportunities when people are bored and sitting around.

Why would you think it’s stupid to recognize visual patterns?

We’re hard wired to be able to recognize human faces and all sorts of meaning behind a single face, from the person’s age to their emotional state. We can extend that complex pattern recognition skillset to dog breeds, animals, tree species, fruits, vegetables, paintings, flower types, colors, and all sorts of patterns from the natural world. Even the shape of clouds tell us something about the weather, and the color of a wound can tell us something about how it’s healing (or not).

Human-created patterns are easy to memorize, too: letters, numbers, fonts, patterns, fabrics, clothing types, symbols, emojis, warning labels, signs that mean “no smoking” or “emergency exit this way,” etc.

So is it that much of a stretch that we can recognize an impressionist painting or an Art Deco building or even specific examples of those, and remember the artist/architect and maybe even things like the year it was created, and where it is physically located? If we’re doing that kind of stuff seamlessly with our brains, recognizing a few dozen car models seems trivial in comparison.

I think you’re right. The line blurring between corporate sponsorship and community support is pretty difficult to determine. If someone wants to build a community around a particular video game or movie or television show, of course the corporation that publishes it benefits from a bunch of positive discussion about it. But at the same time, that corporate-owned product is part of our shared culture, and a legitimate topic to discuss in a forum like this.

And it’s not even necessarily pure corporate stuff, either. There are nonprofit and trade and governmental organizations that rely on advertising for public messaging: a tourism board promoting their location as a good vacation spot, an agricultural trade group promoting recipes using their specific product, a government health department drive encouraging vaccinations, etc. They pay for ads through conventional outlets while also promoting their interests on social media.

It’s just an ecosystem. We should be aware that there are those who would seek to influence us here, whether for money or politics or other motivation, and navigate these spaces with that in mind.

Wait does that make Pennsylvania some kind of Cissylvania?

No such thing as an NDA that allows a spouse to work in the same room, and allows the spouse to actually be on video while blurred, but draws the line at not being able to unblur the video.

Yeah, military vehicles generally don’t have keys. On a base they’re generally secured with fences and gates and human guards, and things like cable locks on the steering wheel or something critical like that.

And that introduces a specific type of supply chain threat: someone who possesses a computer can infect their own computer, sell it or transfer it to the target, and then use the embedded microcode against the target, even if the target completely reformats and reinstalls a new OS from scratch.

That’s not going to affect most people, but for certain types of high value targets they now need to make sure that the hardware they buy hasn’t already been infected in the supply chain.

Your dentist’s name is Crentist?

If you follow the Arch installation guide it’ll get you to a working system, but you’ll need to install sudo yourself. It’s not strictly required so it’s not installed with the essential packages (or even the packages recommended for most users in the guide).

Yeah, timestamps should always be stored in UTC, but actual planning of anything needs to be conscious of local time zones, including daylight savings. Coming up with a description of when a place is open in local time might be simple when described in local time but clunkier in UTC when accounting for daylight savings, local holidays, etc.

I’d say the real world doesn’t reward being actually gifted.

More accurately, the real world punishes being below average at any one of like a dozen skillets. You can’t min/max your stats because being 99th percentile at something won’t make up for being 30th percentile at something else. Better to be 75th percentile at both.

The real world requires cross-disciplinary coordination, which means thriving requires both soft skills and multiple hard skills.

They pronounce it “heera”

A big chunk of the US military’s budget is on very expensive US healthcare. Something like 7% of the military’s annual budget is health expenses, and that doesn’t even include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care to veterans.