this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
1115 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

14659 readers
3455 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 day ago (3 children)

So that's why every stargate planet looks like Canada

[–] [email protected] 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Sadly Lemmy isn't big enough to support niche communities, but I really enjoyed r/unexpectedstargate back in the day.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] sun_is_ra 152 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Had to look it up because I didnt beleive

sure enough its correct

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree

[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Something poetic and quaint about a link to a Wikipedia article titled "Tree"

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

reddit has broken me. I was expecting it to point to weed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

I was expecting an undirected acyclic graph.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Yo momma so fat she sat on a binary tree and squashed it into a linked list in O(1) time.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

here’s a cool blog post that expands on this There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

i didn’t even put it in a bookmark folder, it’s just loose on my bookmark bar because it’s such an interesting post that i reread from time to time

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

That was a very fun and interesting reading! Thanks for sharing

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also, no such thing as fish.

Google it.

[–] boydster 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Impossible. If there were no such thing as fish, how could bees be fish?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

I don’t have the tools to know how to respond to this comment. You win.

Edit: Holy shit. I just did a quick google. Boydster is not shitting us. Just google “bees are fish.” Oddly enough, this actually furthers the thesis of fish not existing.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I don’t have the tools to know how to respond to this comment. You win.

This is the best way I've ever seen utter befuddlement expressed. Chapeau!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

To add on for anyone who is lazy like me, the thing where Google summarizes says California has classified bees as fish under an environmental protection act. According to the first result (Reddit) it's because fish is a catch all term in that law. Instead of listing all the animals they just use fish. Because fish,bees, and the other animals are all invertebrates.

Now whoever reads this has three Lemmy comments, a reddit thread reference, and an ai overview reference as some solid sources

[–] [email protected] 16 points 22 hours ago (9 children)

Fish are vertebrates they have a backbone

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 23 hours ago

What a nicely packaged little subthread to come across while decompressing after a super busy day, lol!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

Beavers are also fish.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My sister in law recently quipped that "Trees are a social construct" and at first I thought she was just being glib but now I can't get that statement out of my head.

[–] resting_parrot 20 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I listen to a podcast called Completely Arbortrary. They talk about a different tree species each episode. They say trees are a strategy, not a strict definition.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

Thanks! Just subscribed. See they have a couple Metasequoia episodes -a favorite of mine .

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nature likes things that turn hard- Wait what?

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Weren't there like, several millions of years where trees evolved but nothing had come yet to break down wood, so like, generations of dead forest just fell on top of each other until some fungus was like "that looks yummy"?

[–] ryedaft 43 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The molecule is called lignin. And yes, there was a good 60 million years before that particular problem was cracked.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

First, we bio-engineer bacteria and fungi to prefer plastic as food.

Second, these bacteria become a serious endopathogen in the human body while scavenging our precious bodily microplastics.

Third, we engineer a bacteriophage to attack the bacteria in our brains.

Fourth…

The whole human comedy just keeps going and going

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The beautiful part is that when wintertime rolls around the gorillas simply freeze to death

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

Exactly the reference I thought of reading this

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

I know an old woman who swallowed a fly...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Yes, that is how we got coal.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Its called convergent evolution and you also have some shit you wouldnt believe that makes all apes similar to us.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Apes are so similar to us because we came from a common ancestor. I'd love to hear if there are traits we evolved independently after we split though.

[–] TaiCrunch 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hit me. I love evolutionary fun facts.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 22 hours ago

Trees are like every other plant, ONLY MORE SO

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] skulblaka 19 points 1 day ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And it's not even one creature or even type of creature. Look up rhizobium.

Tbf, as we learn more about our gut microbiomes, it turns out that humans are that way as well. Maybe that's why we have the thoughts in our heads vs. the feelings in our guts... (no that's actually not it at all, except... isn't it though?).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I figure the feeling of being in your head is simply due to your eyeballs being located there. Now I want to put a 3d camera on my hips, and steam it to VR goggles.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

People have experimented with that sort of thing. Here's a DIY for going into 3rd person mode using a camera on a stick and some electronics in a backpack. Bit of googling also finds me body swap experiments, but nothing on a crotch perspective.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The hips do not lie. Ipso facto, you would be seeing ultimate truth.

It turns out that the meaning of life is at crotch level.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (4 children)

tbf isn't a tree just a plant but big? makes sense that any plant species can evolve into a tree just by getting bigger

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Well there are certain features needed for a plant to get that big. So those features had to evolve independently each time which is a bit interesting. Wood is the famous example.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›