I posted this as a reply to another comment from a user on another instance, but your instance doesn’t allow you to see hexbear, so I’ll reply here too.

Yeah, it’s a bit unfortunate using the word design that way. However, it’s not completely wrong, it’s almost more a problem of the baggage that the word design carries, obviously “intelligent design” as a concept for evolution is bullshit and if you can’t separate the concept of “design” from intent then you’re still just as wrong. All that said, I think it’s fair to talk about species being designed, there is just absolutely zero intent involved anywhere,* with no forethought, or any “thought” at all from the designer. A species is “designed” entirely by the forces of circumstance. The material conditions, if you will, of their environment.

Making this comment because I’m seeing some of these issues crop up in the comments, and in comments from different instances that can’t see each other, so rather than reply individually, I’ll just make a separate standalone comment.

It bugs me a little whenever people talk about how old a species is. There are different levels to how wrong it is possible to be about this. The worst level is where people think that it’s the individuals that are somehow ancient. No. The individuals from those times are as long gone as all the other individuals from that time. Most people don’t think that, but it happens. Another level is a bit less wrong, but still is. That the species itself is ancient because it somehow avoided evolution. Nah, it’s just retained a lot of characteristics. Theses species still underwent evolution, it’s literally unavoidable. It’s just that the way they adapted to an ancient environment still works as adaptation to the current (and intervening) environments. They haven’t gone through as many drastic visible changes because the way their ancestors lived still works for their modern iterations.

So it is definitely fair to say a species is old, but it’s important to realize that that doesn’t mean it’s literally old in that it hasn’t evolved. If they are impressed by species that haven’t gone through a lot of apparent changes over the eons, they should check out stromatolites.

Personally, I for one would really appreciate it if you provided the archive link in the OP especially if you’re posting paywalled articles. When the OP is the one who does it, then all the readers who want to follow the link that the OP posted won’t have to, and the people who don’t even know about archive sites will still get to read it when they wouldn’t have otherwise (and maybe even learn about what archive sites are as a result). In that sense, it’s not about entitlement, it’s about one person doing it one time rather than (for example) 30 people all having to do it while others may not even be aware they can do it.

Another thing is that while it may be ultimately just a drop in the bucket, it does help cut down on the amount of traffic that mainstream western media sites will get, which I think you would agree is better than helping increase it for them. It’s for that reason that just as a reader browsing, I almost always archive any MSM news articles I read, including the ones I see in posts here. On the occasion I do post, I always make a point to link the archive or frontend (like piped/invidious for youtube, redlib for reddit, used to do nitter for twitter, etc.) It’s a very minor annoyance to have to do, as either the reader or as the poster, but I’m all the more appreciative of posters who do do it and wish that more would.

It’s not like you have to, but it would be courteous and considerate if you did.

The only people I know of who don’t know what the word “liberal” means, especially in the context the person above was using it, are very ignorant Americans. To be clear, even though I don’t like most Americans, I’m not blaming them for being ignorant in this particular case because they have been subjected to decades of mostly uncontested propaganda deliberately obfuscating the term. But most of the rest of the world knows what everyone is talking about when saying “liberal” and knows it’s a right wing ideology. And everyone shouldn’t have to hold up the conversation to preemptively explain what the word means to those who don’t already know. People are generally expected to pick up the gist of a sentence or point via the context of what’s being said. The context was perfectly clear and it just sounds like concern trolling to go on about needing to hand-hold and dumb down the terminology being used for “the average person.”

Lemmygrad isn’t “hated” by most of the wider lemmyverse. There’s just a loud and obnoxious minority of people that will rail and rant about lemmygrad. They loudly rant about lemmygrad because they aren’t used to seeing their worldview get challenged and by its very nature as a radical leftist community, lemmygrad is a challenge to the typical background liberal perspective.

It’s no surprise we all end up seeing a lot of threads about “those mean tankies at lemmygrad” (and hexbear too) made by people who can’t take their worldview getting questioned, or even shown to be flawed, or just not standing up to their own scrutiny, and who get mad when that happens. There are also of course people with ideological reasons to demonize leftwing politics and will spread shit for that reason alone. But overall, I don’t think most people care enough except to think “oh yeah that’s that instance with those radical lefties, they’re weird but they do make some great memes sometimes.”

Thank you for this. Very helpful.