>Tools, language and cooperation.

Its a little more complicated than that, and as always the devil is in the details.

First, other animals from a wide variety of walks of life use, make, and modify tools. A domain that was once thought to be unique to humans has since the time of its first documentation by Jane Goodall been a steady stream of incoming observational and experimental data to show that animals use tools. Our great ape cousins are proficient tool users as are many species of monkeys like macaques and capuchins. Many birds also use tools, the most formidable being the New Caledonian Crow.

Second, language isn't completely unique to us either. Many aspects of language have been described in animal communication. For example, there are a growing number of species known to us that make specific calls for specific situations. Some monkeys will make a specific call for a land predator like a jaguar vs. a sky predator like a hawk. Still other species are able to use their calls to deceive which is a very advanced cognitive ability. They make a warning call to distract the group while they sneak off and get some tasty piece of food that they otherwise would have had to compete for. We are really only beginning to scratch the surface of animal communication and the more we discover the more we realize just how complex their communication systems can be. Now, you are correct in that other species lack a certain "something" that we seem to have. They aren't able to communicate quite like us, but to say that animals lack language outright is to do a disservice to the complexity of language that they do have.

Finally, cooperation is seen throughout the animal kingdom in abundance. Animals cooperate all the time, especially social animals like primates. In fact there are some species that are so reliant on cooperation that they can't survive or breed without it. These animals are called cooperative breeders. Species like naked mole rats, bees, and callitrichid monkeys require the aid of others to help raise their offspring. Other individuals in the group will forgo their own breeding to insure the survival of the dominant pair's offspring. A great novel on this subject is called Mothers and Others. There are many great experiments that require the cooperation of two individuals to solve, these have been successfully completed by many different species of monkeys and apes as well as non-primate species like elephants. In addition many species hunt in groups that requires significant cooperation and coordination. A lone wolf isn't going to take down a great big bison, they need to cooperate in order to take down their next prey. But again, there is something that is unique about the way humans cooperate, and this is more accurately referred to as shared intentionality. Humans can visualize a common goal and cooperatively work towards that goal. "Shared intentionality, sometimes called ‘we’ intentionality, refers to collaborative interactions in which participants share psychological states with one another...For example, in problem- solving activities participants may have a shared goal and shared action plans for pursuing that goal, and in communication they may simply share experience with one another linguistically. The big Vygotskian idea is that what makes human cognition different is not more individual brainpower, but rather the ability of humans to learn through other persons and their artifacts, and to collaborate with others in collective activities (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne & Moll, 2005a; Tomasello, Kruger & Ratner, 1993)." Its a step up from the classical cooperation we see in animals.

Finally, the last trait that is unique to humans (although newer research may be demonstrating this in some primate species) is cumulative culture. Humans have the unique ability to not only share psychological states we have the ability to store intergenerational information and share that information quickly and efficiently with others. This information can be rapidly dispersed through a group (or between groups) and is quickly passed on from one generation to another. Now, we know that animals share all sorts of information and that individuals do learn from each other. For example, a single female Japanese Macaque decide to start washing her potatoes in the sea. Within a vert short period of time nearly everyone, but especially the young individuals, were washing their potatoes too. Over successive generations different washing techniques have been added in, and even different foods are washed. But its a great example of a single individual introducing a new behaviour to a group which suddenly spreads amongst all its individuals. Its a great example of animals having a distinct culture. But humans just take this to the next level. Where it takes years or even decades for a chimpanzee to master the use tools requires to get termites out of a termite mound it would take humans seconds. Moreover, most animals can only learn these complex behaviour if they are taught or observe these behaviours while they are young. Adult humans are much better at picking up new traits, behaviours, and skills as compared to other adult animals. We simply are faster at sharing and absorbing information and this has led to our unique trait of cumulative culture.

So those are the things that are truly unique to humans (in so far as we understand today):

1. Shared intentionality
   
2. Aspects of language
   
3. Cumulative culture

A few I've gotten into recently:

https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X - Emotional Intelligence - it's about the difference between your brain's rational/logical/analytical processing and emotional/intuitive processing, and why they both matter.

https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/B0032COUMC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1541098584&sr=1-3&keywords=drive - Drive - it's about how motivation works, particularly in the workplace but also in personal life, and how freedom, mastery, and a sense of purpose can motivate people to do greater things than classic rewards and punishments will.

https://drgabormate.com/book/scattered-minds/ - Scattered - it's mostly about ADHD, but it has some really interesting stuff about the psychology of sensitive minds and how they can be damaged by childhood stress. The book focuses mainly on the psychological aspects of ADHD, and less on the medication and how-to-fix-it stuff that the more self-helpy ADHD books talk about.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034 - How to Win Friends and Influence People - it's an older book with a weirdly folksy tone to it compared to modern books, but it still has some great advice. It doesn't dive deep into psychology, really. It's mostly about how little changes to how you approach social situations can have big effects on how people feel about you and whether or not they'll listen to what you have to say. For example, people unconsciously feel better when they hear their own name, so it helps to deliberately remember and use the names of people you meet.

We don't really know. It could be literally infinite, but it's too large to understand.

One interesting take I heard, while reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing was the idea that we're just a microverse within a grand universe.

I can't explain for shit, but picture it like this: you have a massive, single Universe. It's a whirling, unstable realm of probability and crashing dimensions, with an unfathomable size.

In this grand Universe, a eight separate dimensions collide and release a huge amount of energy. It bubbles outward for a hundred thousand years or so, then collapses. A separate location has six dimensions collide, creating some matter and antimatter, expands for a billion years or so, theb collapses. This is happening billions of times per second, with most of those little bubbles forming and immediately collapsing, a few others lasting for a billion or so years, and a very few stabilizing and lasting nearly indefinitely.

Our universe is that last one. Just a single, tiny expanding bubble. A galaxy in a larger universe. There are probably others, but they are so far apart that there is no way to imagine the distance (the nearest stable 'verse could be two trillion 'verse-lengths away).

There isn't a universal tech tree in real life. It's kind of hard to say any culture is "more advanced" than another when they're so different. It's especially hard when we just don't know that much about the native societies in the Americas pre-Columbus. There's a really amazing book called '1491' by Charles C. Mann that's a pretty easy read and probably the best summary of our understanding of pre-Columbian America and would answer a lot of your questions.

There’s also a book that covers this the topic of common patterns in nature, and goes into depth on how it applies to organisms of all sizes. Extremely interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582

The answer seems to be “when working in 3 dimensions, there’s efficient ways to do things, so natural selection will tend towards them over time.“

For example, if there’s two ways to construct a circulatory system, moving the same amount of blood, but one moves blood with less energy, this frees up energy for reproductive activities, providing an advantage to that organism.

But these “laws of 3D construction” apply not just to veins/arteries, but to your brain, trees, and even cities’ sewers and power cables.

It’s all about efficient networks co-living in a single “organism”

Yes. The size of "invariant components" like cells set a limit on how small things can be. But cells are not the only component for which that is true. When it comes to mammals, the more important limiting factor is the circulatory system - mainly the size of the capillaries. The smallest mammal is the Etruscan shrew. And this is basically the smallest a mammal can be in theory. When you shrink a mammalian circulatory system smaller than a shrew's it becomes wildly inefficient. So mammals have never evolved to be smaller, even when it could have provided other advantages.

The circulatory system is also the reason why the blue whale is pretty much the biggest possible mammal. If they get any bigger, the space between capillaries becomes too large, and cells start to starve of oxygen.

There is an interesting book called Scale that goes into this topic is detail.

There is a great chapter about this in the book Sapiens. If this is your kind of thing, you will probably love that book. Basically, humans drove them to extinction through hunting and habitat loss due to farming and agriculture. As humans became better hunters with more advanced tools, it became more advantageous to be smaller and hide than it did to be large and able to fight. As human communication and cooperation advanced, they became better hunters through teamwork and coordination. They also began to desire a greater prize (a large kill that could feed their booming population). The evidence in support of this is the fact that large species thrived in places where humans were not. As humans expanded across the globe, the large species began to vanish from those places.

Highly recommend the book, but you can read about it here too.

1491 is a pretty solid book that talks a great deal about how things were before a lot of the conventional European settling went on in the Americas/pre Columbian Exchange.

Basically it'll exemplify why a lot of that "the New World was this empty place with nothing going on" way of thinking is a load of horse shit considering how there was pretty intricate stuff in play.

OP here are a few

https://hyperchiller.com/products/hyperchiller-iced-coffee-maker

A mug which allegedly freezes even hot drinks in 60 seconds, requires the container to be put in the freezer before hand.


RCS Cooper Cooler Rapid Beverage-Chilling Appliance HC01C https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000U3CIW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_nCNNBb5MG25EZ

This Amazon product which for a cool ba-dum-tsss £130 can chill a can, or even upto a bottle in 2 mins

Hope this helps, OP

Shave in the direction the hair is growing, afterwards use a 2% salicylic acid product which will reduce redness and inflammation, and use a moisturizer which will also reduce redness and inflammation afterwards. If you use the products I link to it will definitely help you, but there are thousands of similar products so feel free to check them out. Please don't listen to those other people, hot water will dry out your skin and make red bumps even redder especially if you don't moisturize. As for cutting yourself, you have to be more careful and don't feel the need to stretch your skin while shaving. If you do shave in the shower, cutting yourself will be easier cause there's no mirror.

Sure! Buy this stuff:

Environmental Technology 8-Ounce Kit Lite Pour-On, High Gloss Finish https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CEMU3I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zViGAb88SATC9

There's a couple solutions in the box that you mix together and then pour over your project. It dries to a thick coat of resin. Very cool stuff. Since you're planning on using it as a cutting board, I'd recommend sanding it down a little once dried and applying a food-safe sealant afterward.

I like to use these wipes also great for glasses.

Sorry i should have specified a bit more 24 hour cure time that 25 minutes is working time which is standard either way this is what you need

Environmental Technology 8-Ounce Kit Lite Pour-On, High Gloss Finish https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CEMU3I/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_5.YMybZACC512

I'd watch some youtube videos on finishing table tops with epoxy, they are very helpful

Buy magic shave powder (cream isn't that good). Best decision I made in regards to grooming. Works great on your asshole too. Shaving and trimming never got it that smooth before. Make sure to test on a few areas. Test was fine on my forearms, tried it on my back and my skin became ashy, moisturizer fixed it up easily so no real problem.

I would consult all the literature that has been written about this and speak to therapists/researchers/psychologist/social scientists who study this area. I would take notes from them on what are some "best practice" advice for becoming a more stable and emotionally aware individual. There are books on this stuff written by legitimate folks.

​

One example:

​

https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X

​

I find it absurd that such important self-knowledge is not taught. Most parents suck at this shit and don't pass down the information to their kids.

​

​

Generating heat is a lot easier than removing heat.

There are also small machines that cool things quickly, for example.

It sounds a little cheesy, but when I have the discipline to do it The Artist's Way really helps.

In that case: https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Mouse-Trap-Humane-Mousetrap/dp/B000YFA7HW

I utterly respect your point of view. Do not put the trap away after catching one or two mice, there are always more.

I use these.
It doesnt prevent the smudging, but I keep several with me and in the car because they are so convenient. They sell them at Walmart cheaper than amazon. I pay about $5 for a 100 count box.

Fuck glasses and how easy they smudge. Hope this helps.

Anticlockwise clocks do exist.

They only really exist as a novelty. Clockwise is just conventional and therefore most widely used. Standardising the direction makes it easier to read at a glance.

I swore the answer to your question ( similar) was in this book. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions https://www.amazon.com/dp/0544272994/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_7kyQCbFH0EVZ6

Sorry i don't remember the answer though. Try a library for that book, libraries are free.

Mediabridge Ethernet Cable (25 Feet) - Supports Cat6 / Cat5e / Cat5 Standards, 550MHz, 10Gbps - RJ45 Computer Networking Cord (Part# 31-399-25X) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001W28L2Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GODSDbHYTJD77

Yeah, here ya go OP:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000796XXM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_yI58Bb04X3NBH

Depends on what you consider highly radioactive.

You can buy Uranium on Amazon and let us know.

I had the same problem, and so I would rarely eat apples.

I finally bought an apple slicer, and that made all the difference. I started eating apples pretty regularly after that.

Maybe try feeding him and giving him water because rubbing with oil or alcohol and removing the animal seems to be the only way, meanwhile get a live mouse trap for next time.

This is the right answer. Get one of these
You'll eat way more apples this way.

Edit: fixed link

https://www.amazon.com/Jobar-JB5231-Long-Reach-Comfort/product-reviews/B001G70QW8

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000YJ2SLG/ref=sr_ph_1_s_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1482798766&sr=sr-1&keywords=cerave&th=1

Here's the amazon page

Sure we do.
Also because that's the way the shadow of a sundial turns

You should check out A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. The whole book is an attempt to answer that very question.

Most commonly a CAT5 cable. It's used to get internet from a wall Jack or router. Here's a link for our base and also diagram of it .

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001W28L2Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CROzDbFRG9BWA

A lot of people swear by The Artist's Way.

Yup. It has a 3 lights and tells you if it's good, or has an open neutral, or bad ground.

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Gear-50542-3-Wire-Receptacle/dp/B002LZTKIA

I actually use this: https://www.amazon.com/Softsheen-Magic-Conditioning-Shaving-Platinum/dp/B0000532Q5/ref=sr_1_4_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1469200522


It is easy to use and no risk of cutting yourself open

It really depends on the species. Different species have different mechanisms to recognize familiar or unfamiliar individuals. For example, birds will recognize the call of individuals in neighbouring territories. If a new bird takes over a territory the neighbours will swoop in and will try to re-establish new boundary lines. Other species use scent to tell individuals apart. Still others use social bonding to establish long-lasting relationships. For some species its a really important skill to have. This is especially true for social species as being able to tell who might be a friend or who might be a foe can mean the difference between life and death.

I recommend the book mothers and others to explore the diversity of relationships between offspring and caregivers within the animal kingdom. For mammals there is certainly a period of stress for all individuals concerned during weaning. The offspring want to continue to nurse and the mother (or other) would rather they be weaned so that they can continue on with their own lives. This creates conflict, and where there is conflict there is trouble. For example, primate infants will throw literal tantrums when their mothers deny them milk. Eventually weaning ends and the baby grows up into a juvenile and the nature of the bond between the mother and their offspring changes. If that offspring continues to live within the group the mother will very likely continue to recognize it as kin. This is especially true for animals with social hierarchies like many primate species, or species that require a solid matriarchal structure, like elephants. If that offspring disperses a chance meeting later on may or may not reveal the extent to which those individuals know each other. Again, long lived highly social species tend to also have long memories which enable them to form bonds that transcend time and space. So in this case a chance meeting with a long-lost son or daughter for a primate may result in a meeting that is less violent or aggressive as compared to a meeting with an individual for whom they have no established history.

In other cases there are plenty of species that never establish these bonds or long-term relationships. Out-of-sight is out-of-mind. The biological mechanisms that help identify kin from non-kin (e.g. familiarity, pheromones) may be weak or poorly established. In these cases without constant interaction individuals will begin to see others as strangers even if they grew up together. This is how and why incest occurs with such regularity in the animal kingdom.

When we miss something there is a very complex set of cognitive abilities that is taking place within our brains. Not only are we remembering something from our past but we are also projecting into the future something that we desire. No doubt many animals can miss objects or individuals. For example, mothers (and others) will call out and search for lost offspring sometimes for hours or days. But how long that emotion or memory extends into the future is relatively unknown. So far as we understand very few species, if any, can project their thoughts forward to some future time or state. They may be able to do so at the immediate onset of the trigger, but not necessarily much longer than that. Do animals mourn the loss of individuals? Most show no signs, those that do so signs for a few hours or days, even fewer - were talking perhaps a handful of species - appear to be able to continue to remember individuals and their loss once they are gone. It is that ability to think into the future and to remember the past in significant detail that most species lack. Most species live in the "now", and thus I suppose it is a small comfort to know that in your case that the mother squirrel does not miss her babies and the babies do not miss their mother.

It's possible, but if that's the case then your house is wired seriously, seriously wrong. I doubt that you'd notice it with a phone charger.

When I moved into a house a couple decades ago it was wired very very poorly. Ground was hooked up on hot wires, polarity was reversed, ground was left dangling, you name it. The previous owner fancied himself a handyman and he really, really wasn't.

If you have reason to suspect that you have wiring problems then it's easy to check. Most big hardware stores sell a device like this which will automatically detect if your outlets are wired correctly when plugged in. They're only a few bucks which is likely cheaper than whatever device a faulty outlet might destroy.

If your phone seems to be taking odd amounts of time to charge first make sure that you're using the same charger in each (some chargers put out more power than others) and if you are then try a more scientific test (same software load, same amount of screen on-time, same start and end battery percentage). It's quite likely that it's just in your head, but the only way to be sure is to do some science!

The submarine would be fine, but the crew would be in trouble.

PICTURE (recommended)

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TEXT

The submarine wouldn’t burst. Submarine hulls are strong enough to withstand 50 to 80 atmospheres of external pressure from water, so they’d have no problem containing 1 atmosphere of internal pressure from air.

The hull would likely be airtight. Although watertight seals don’t necessarily hold back air, the fact that water can’t find a way through the hull under 50 atmospheres of pressure suggests that air won’t escape quickly. There may be a few specialized one-way valves that would let air out, but in all likelihood, the submarine would remain sealed.

The big problem the crew would face would be the obvious one: air.

Nuclear submarines use electricity to extract oxygen from water. In space, there’s no water,^[citation ^needed] so they wouldn’t be able to manufacture more air. They carry enough oxygen in reserve to survive for a few days, at least, but eventually they’d be in trouble.

To stay warm, they could run their reactor, but they’d have to be very careful how much they ran it—because the ocean is colder than space.
Technically, that’s not really true. Everyone knows that space is very cold. The reason spacecraft can overheat is that space isn’t as thermally conductive as water, so heat builds up more quickly in spacecraft than in boats.

But if you’re even more pedantic, it is true. The ocean is colder than space.

Interstellar space is very cold, but space near the Sun—and near Earth—is actually incredibly hot! The reason it doesn’t seem that way is that in space, the definition of “temperature” breaks down a little bit. Space seems cold because it’s so empty. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of a collection of particles. In space, individual molecules have a high average kinetic energy, but there are so few of them that they don’t affect you.

When I was a kid, my dad had a machine shop in our basement, and I remember watching him use a metal grinder. Whenever metal touched the grinding wheel, sparks flew everywhere, showering his hands and clothes. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t hurt him—after all, the glowing sparks were several thousand degrees.

I later learned that the reason the sparks didn’t hurt him was that they were tiny; the heat they carried could be absorbed into the body without warming anything more than a tiny patch of skin.

The hot molecules in space are like the sparks in my dad’s machine shop; they might be hot or cold, but they’re so small that touching them doesn’t change your temperature much.^1 Instead, your heating and cooling is dominated by how much heat you produce and how quickly it pours out of you into the void.

Without a warm environment around you radiating heat back to you, you lose heat by radiation much faster than normal. But without air around you to carry heat from your surface, you also don’t lose much heat by convection.^2 For most human-carrying spacecraft, the latter effect is more important; the big problem isn’t staying warm, it’s keeping cool.

A nuclear submarine is clearly able to maintain a livable temperature inside when the outer hull is cooled to 4°C by the ocean. However, if the submarine’s hull needed to hold this temperature while in space, it would lose heat at a rate of about 6 megawatts while in the shadow of the Earth. This is more than the 20 kilowatts supplied by the crew—and the few hundred kilowatts of apricity^3 when in direct sunlight—so they’d need to run the reactor just to stay warm.^4

To get out of orbit, a submarine would need to slow down enough that it hit the atmosphere. Without rockets, it has no way to do this...

Okay—technically, a submarine does have rockets.

Unfortunately, the rockets are pointing the wrong way to give the submarine a push. Rockets are self-propelling, which means they have very little recoil. When a gun fires a bullet, it’s pushing the bullet up to speed. With a rocket, you just light it and let go. Launching missiles won’t propel a submarine forward.

But not launching them could.**

If the ballistic missiles carried by a modern nuclear submarine were taken from their tubes, turned around, and placed in the tubes backward, they could each change the submarine’s speed by about 4 meters per second. A typical de-orbiting maneuver requires in the neighborhood of 100 m/s of delta-v (speed change), which means that the 24 Trident missiles carried by an Ohio-class submarine could be just enough to get it out of orbit. Now, because the submarine has no heat-dissipating ablative tiles, and because it’s not aerodynamically stable at hypersonic velocities, it would inevitably tumble and break up in the air.

If you tucked yourself into the right crevice in the submarine—and were strapped into an acceleration couch—there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny chance that you could survive the rapid deceleration. Then you’d need to jump out of the wreckage with a parachute before it hit the ground.

If you ever try this, and I suggest you don’t, I have one piece of advice that is absolutely critical: Remember to disable the detonators on the missiles.

^1 This is why, even though matches and torches are about the same temperature, you see tough guys in movies extinguish matches by pinching them but never see them do the same with torches.

^2 Or conduction.

^3 This is my single favorite word in the English language. It means the warmth of sunlight in winter.

^4 When they moved into the Sun, the sub’s surface would warm, but they’d still be losing heat faster than they’d be gaining it.

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Courtesy of Randal Munroe's What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions