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I was thinking maybe wisdom teeth extraction.


Common, but a lot of people never get it. Either they didn't grow wisdom teeth at all, or they aren't pressing into the rest of the teeth in a way to cause a problem, or they lack dental insurance.

It's one of those super low-priority surgeries for most people. I'm very glad I got it done myself, though!


Also that would come from a different data source, since it's a surgery done on luxury bones as opposed to regular bones.


We have this card-tiling game based on this idea.

https://www.ravensburger.us/en-US/products/games/thinkfun/iz...

It's not a great game, but it's fun enough. The box is small, so we keep it around even if we don't play it much.


You can use your left hand to steer the marble (via WASD) and then the right hand on your arrow keys to move the camera around.


You can easily download a rendered chart by using the chart's getDataURL() function. Then just create a new element in your document and set that element's href to the return from getDataURL() and bob's your uncle.


I need to check that out, thank you!


Middle out compression is what the guys in the TV show Silicon Valley invent.


lol ok.


For anybody interested in how beavers change landscapes, I can't recommend Ben Goldfarb's "Eager" highly enough. It made me a believer.


This was a my favorite book last year. Friend and I went on a hike across Isle Royale and while we skipped the area that is inhabited by beavers they had the book at the gift shop and it sounded pretty interesting.

REALLY good book and made me think very differently about beavers. Highly recommend it!

Edit: The section of the book dedicated to European beavers is much smaller than the American counterpart, in case that matters. I do think the coverage was good on both sides though.


Isle Royale is amazing. Just filter your water... because beavers.


Yea, maybe at some point I'll get back out there and hike the Minong trail where all the beavers are. I'm really glad we didn't this last time though, we got a TON of rain. I'm guessing the Minong would've been incredibly difficult to navigate, as the other areas were really bad.

it was a heck of a trip though. I had a couple of up and down days but generally, it was a good one. It was my first hike, and it was a multi-day hike. So, in some ways I bit off more than I should've lol


That's the Minong Ridge. Ups and downs. :)


free folk activities fascinate pets as much as pets fascinate free folk


Another interesting (free!) book is Utah State's Riverscapes Restoration Design Manual [1], which is about "Process-Based Restoration" of streams. Unlike the more common "form-based" restoration, PBR provides materials in the form of hand-built structures of natural materials, especially large pieces of wood.

Actually, I'd really recommend first just looking at all the pictures in the "pocket guide" version of the book. [2]

[1] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19590.63049/2

[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28222.13123/1


I appreciate the rec! The extended phenotype (Dawkins) also highlights this phenomenon.


Does it discuss the patagonian (transplanted) beavers?


Do you have any evidence for the claim that it was disease rather than the immense slaughter?


Yes. There are multiple papers written about this, here's a nice overview article: https://www.nacdnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/bisoncoll...

There was overhunting of bison, but normally overhunting leads to a gradual decline of the population (and we've seen that with overfishing). The bison near-extinction happened within _one_ year. The hunters in 1883 were waiting in vain for the bison to come.


from page 108:

Removing 840,000 animals from 4.5 million leaves them a good 3 million short of extinct. But Texas tick fever has an 81% death rate.11 Removing 81% from 4.5 million leaves just 855,000. Shooting b 840,000 of them leaves N 15,000, which is a lot like b 25,177 (Fig. 1)

Their own conclusions was that absent hunting, there would have been around 855,000 bison that year. Hunting reduced the remaining population after tick fever by 99.2%! Ignoring this is the equivalent of suggesting it was not an iceberg that sunk the titanic, but a lack of buoyancy.


Well, yes. Hunting obviously was a part of the issue.

I'm just saying that bison near-extinction was not a result of a directed action to exterminate them.

It's more fair to say that bison went through a normal bust cycle and hunting prevented them from bouncing back.


You’ve shown an interesting insight: hunting could not have been only cause of the near-extinction of the buffalo. However, the way you’ve presented it is extremely misleading. It sounds like you are blaming the natives for the downfall of the buffalo.

I do not believe this is what you intended to get across, since the evidence you have presented doesn’t support it. Please be careful about how you share information. It is as important as the information itself.

The buffalo did not just disappear and the extermination was most definitely planned. Regardless of the logistical impossibility of that goal via hunting alone, this was the goal and the goal was achieved. This is well documented. The technicality between “preventing a bounce back” and “seeking extermination” does not matter, because the goal was extermination.


> It sounds like you are blaming the natives for the downfall of the buffalo.

Well, yeah. They created an unhealthy ecological situation with abysmal biodiversity, where one species dominated an entire ecological niche without natural predators.

And it's not like the North American Natives are special. Humans have been causing large-scale extinctions since the Ice Age: https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction

> this was the goal and the goal was achieved.

Care to provide the proof? Contemporary official documents, large-scale official plans, etc.?


In looking through sources, I'm no longer even convinced that disease was relevant anymore. An encyclopedia article shows a decline from about 15 million in 1865 to 7 million in 1873 - roughly 1 million per year.[1] This sounds like a gradual decline to me. And with some math Buffalo Bill famously killed 4000 over two years. Assuming the average hunter only did a tenth of that, it would only take 5000 hunters over 20 years to get the job done (roughly).

Furthermore, the National Park Service, part of the Department of the Interior, quotes the Secretary of the Interior of 1873 stating that "[t]he civilization of the Indian is impossible while buffalo remain on the plains”.[2] In fact the DOI secretary in 2023 said verbatim that "bison were nearly driven to extinction through uncontrolled hunting and a U.S. policy of eradication tied to intentional harm against and control of Tribes". [3]

This is not hard to believe at al. There were centuries of war between the natives and the settlers. Presidential campaigns slogans focused on defeats over the Indians[4]. The U.S. absolutely hated the Natives from the start. One of the cited grievances in the Declaration of Independence is the fact that Britain would deal with the Natives.

It is both plausible and proven that extermination was the goal. If you still don't believe this here is the most detailed timeline I've ever seen on the subject from the US Fish and Wildlife service. [5]

[1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-... [2] https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison.... [3] https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-announ... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tippecanoe [5] https://web.archive.org/web/20200210033215/https://www.fws.g...


Do you have any source for this being planned to exterminate them to make it more difficult for the natives?

Because it sure sounds like that wouldn’t have happened without the diseases eliminating well over 80% of the population already


> The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#Government_inv...


There's actually LESS genetic diversity in a single breeding population than in two separate ones. When you have two, they can drift in different directions or be subject to different selection pressures. With just one, all of that stuff is swamped out.


Well they can drift until they no longer are capable of interbreeding. Now you have two species with small populations lacking diversity.


That takes a really long time though. Most domestic dogs can still breed with wild wolves after ~14,000 years of being pretty well separated by humans, and after some fairly substantial phenotypic shifts.


There's a general guideline called the 50-500 rule. You need at least 50 animals to avoid immediate inbreeding (and also stochastic extinction from a fire or flood or disease etc), and about 500 to have a genetically healthy population. That varies some after a bottleneck event since your genetic population will be functionally less than your actual physical one, but it's a decent way to approach the problem.


I'm another vote for hiding the cursor. It's pretty distracting, especially early on in a level when there's still a lot of low-level bricks.


Pointer lock is now in the options, it also hides the cursor, let me know your thoughts.


That's be an option soon :)


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