Permanently Deleted

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I remember reading in the Calvin and Hobbes 10th anniversary book that Bill Watterson started drawing dinosaurs how he remembered them, as Lost World looking tail draggers. He got mail from people correcting his dinosaurs, looked into it and found out how much new dino knowledge came out since he last paid attention. He then got super into dinosaurs again.

  • glk [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Libs then: The demise of the dinosaurs was because small mammals outcompeted them in the marketplace of natural selection

    A meteorite: :side-eye-1:

  • MagisterSinister [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Not a fan of this, either. I've always seen it as a good thing when we can revise how we view some dinosaurs. If we wouldn't do that, we'd still think dinosaurs looked like this . And it's not as if these older reconstructions are gone now, they're still part of our cultural history, they show how our knowledge about these animals has undergone an evolution of its own. They show how artists in the past worked with the knowledge available to them, and i love this historic paleo art even though it's often inaccurate. The statues in the link, for example, they're a great example of how people reacted when they learned for the first time that giant, dragon-like lizards were something that had actually lived in England at some point in time. How they sculpted them is hillariously wrong, but it's also fascinating to see how they imagined them when you put the fossil evidence of their time next to it.

    Let's look at the most prominent example were people get riled up about the mere idea of feathered dinosaurs because it clashes with a pop culture franchise they know from their childhood, the Jurassic Park franchise: When it came out, it was a largely accurate interpretation of how people's ideas about how dinosaurs looked like and behaved had just been comletely overhauled. It was made less than 20 years after the dinosaur renaissance, when new discoveries about species like Deinonychus showed that some dinosaurs weren't lumbering sacks of flesh, but agile and highly intelligent animals. It had sauropods graciously striding on land instead of being stuck in a swamp, submerged under water to carry their weight. It had T. rex running in a horizontal posture instead of dragging its tail along the ground. All of that went directly against classic depictions of these animals. And it was cool that it did that. As a dinosaur nerd kid, i loved that it wasn't like some Hammer Studios monster movie where people would just glue a spiky crest to an iguanodon to film a fighting "dinosaur", but something that matched the science at that time. It's the ultimate depiction of late 20th century dinosaurs, and as that kind of cultural artifact, it stays relevant, but it can only retain that relevance because it is also obsolete, because it is the perfect representation of an imagining of dinosaurs that has now, in itself, become historical, that has died out and is reconstructed like the dinosaurs it shows (pls don't ask me what that last sentence means, i just did a Zizek there i think).

    I honestly wouldn't mind a Jurassic Park reboot with feathered raptors and a semi-aquatic Spinosaurus, but as you say, they're going for the brand recognition instead.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      people get riled up about the mere idea of feathered dinosaurs because it clashes with a pop culture franchise they know from their childhood, the Jurassic Park franchise: When it came out, it was a largely accurate interpretation of how people’s ideas about how dinosaurs looked like and behaved had just been completely overhauled. It was made less than 20 years after the dinosaur renaissance, when new discoveries about species like Deinonychus showed that some dinosaurs weren’t lumbering sacks of flesh, but agile and highly intelligent animals. It had sauropods graciously striding on land instead of being stuck in a swamp, submerged underwater to carry their weight. It had T. rex running in a horizontal posture instead of dragging its tail along the ground. All of that went directly against classic depictions of these animals. And it was cool that it did that

      I honestly wouldn’t mind a Jurassic Park reboot with feathered raptors and a semi-aquatic Spinosaurus, but as you say, they’re going for the brand recognition instead.

      A good example of capitalism ruining something. As soon as Jurassic Park became successful (profitable) it ceased to be a piece of art showcasing what we thought were real animals and became a product that turned them into a static copyrighted image.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        This is even in-universe in Jurassic World. Indomenous Rex or whatever isn't a fucking dinosaur. It's now a fictional monster, so who cares? I could watch Godzilla or some shit for things that are like dinos. If I'm watching J-Park, I expect fucking actual dinosaurs. That movie tells on itself so much that I actually enjoy it.

        • blobjim [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Yeah I don't understand how they ran out of ideas and went straight for mutant dino experiment when they've only had a handful of dinosaurs in the entire series. Aren't there like a million other carnivorous dinosaurs scientists have constructed models of? They didn't need to do the mutant thing at all, they could have just used some 'real' predator dino in its place. And they could have done the feathers too! It wouldn't be hard to make them much spookier with feathers too.

          Of course the Jurrasic World movies also kind of suck because they've only had like one creepy horror-type scene (the long sequence in the second one). Most of those movies are just people running around with no sense of mystery. The other ones were good because the plot and characters were a bit more up in the air. But they want a sort of Indiana Jones type central hero that they can sell merchandise of or something.

        • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
          hexagon
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Its fine when it's something obviously fictional like Indomenous rex or Godzilla but when it's a misrepresentation of a real animal to the point that people reject what the real animal actually is, then it's shitty.

          I also kinda liked that self-aware aspect of Jurassic World too. Now if only anything else about it was good.

          • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            4 years ago

            I got nothing against dinosaur-y monsters. Just keep em out of a franchise about dang dinosaurs. And yeah, they should be realistic, it's not like they became less scary.

  • Zoift [he/him]
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Lol, the dwarf planet thing is funny. Like, come-on Boomer, Do you really want to memorize like a dozen new planets? Does your inner childhood give a fuck about MakeMake? Do you have a parasocial relationship with Ceres?

    At least with feathered dinos it was "changing" some weirdass preconceived notion of what a dino was supposed to be. How did that happen with Pluto? Nobody has a good grasp on the relative sizes of celestial bodies, not even astronomers. Lol damn, shut up.

        • Zoift [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Ceres is fun, because its the Pluto debate, just a few generations earlier. It was the first object found in the asteroi belt, before we knew about the asteroid belt, so it got billing as the 4th planet for a few decades. Then we started finding all it's neighbors, realized nobody wants to memorize +10,000 planets, and reclassified it as an asteroid rather than a planet.

          It's now the innermost dwarf planet, and hopefully it'll get a lander mission soon.

  • AliceBToklas [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I was kinda always on the dwarf planet side of the argument as a kid way before it became a whole thing they formally announced just because it's like... if that's a planet then there are thousands/millions of planets. whatever the number of planets is it is NOT 9. plus pluto is basically a binary body with chiron so it's only like half of a planet at best.

    also dinosaurs with feathers are just thousands of times cooler than unfeathered dinos.

  • comi [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    I’m somewhat baffled by bald dinos anyway, aren’t birds like their direct descendants? It’s completely logical then, that they would be like giant chickens with feathers, running around, chirping and stuff

      • comi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        But imagine not violent, but like more chill giant feathered birds. You go through a forest and bam: 20 feet tall turkey, which makes a strange low-note squawk and runs away

      • acealeam [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        maybe this isn't representative of all emus, but i have fed a captive emu and he was the kindest gentlest soul in the world.

    • MagisterSinister [he/him,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      aren’t birds like their direct descendants?

      All birds are dinosaurs, but birds aren't direct descendants of most non-avian dinosaurs. They split off from the rest of the theropods over 100 million years ago, so there was a really long time where they evolved next to each other. There's dinosaurs that became even more birdlike long after actual, flying birds in various ecological niches were already a thing, there's very birdlike dinosaurs that evolved into less birdlike dinosaurs like T. rex, which we now know to be definitely scaly and not feathery in parts where earlier tyrannosaurids had feathers.

      • comi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Oh, interesting. But like, their last common ancestor was feathered or skinny? I.e. did dinosaurs lose feathers to get scaly, or did they get feathers to become bird-like?

  • Judge_Juche [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Personally I think it minimizes the achievements of Jupiter to put it in the same category as Mercury or Mars or Earth. All the cool planets over 10^25 kg should be called the "Large Chad Planets" and all the dumb planets smaller than that should called the "Tiny Virgin Planets". Except Pluto, who should have its own unique category of "Smol King Planet" becuase its put up with so much already.

  • TruffleBitch [she/her]
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    4 years ago

    I want any of these assholes to look a California condor in the eye and say dinosaurs with feathers are silly.

    • shitstorm [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Everybody's real tough talking shit on feathers till an emu shows up.

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Fair enough. But still, you don't remember this kind of shit?

      https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/2/pluto-is-a-planet-fight-me-astronomy-nerd-fh-design.jpg