https://puzzmo.com/play/circuits/803buy1cch/share

Crossherd #283
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛️🟩🟩🟩⬛️
Time: 0:52
crossherd.clevergoat.com 🐐

I would have got about 35 seconds, but I had the wrong conjugation of 4 down.

I’mma go with “yes”, it’s racist. But like, such a mild (pun intended) form of racism that the only appropriate response is a polite chuckle and shrug.

ants…having no stinging capacity

But that’s like…one of the defining features that a 6-year-old could tell you about them?

Fish could be defined as the most recent common ancestor of tuna and herring, and all of its descendants. That would exclude sharks and lungfish, but would include most other groups that we unambiguously recognise as fish, while excluding tetrapods.

Yeah, if you weren’t already aware, all 4 of the main Age games got remasters, starting with Age of Empires: Definitive Edition in 2018, and most recently ending with Age of Mythology: Retold last year. And they have all (with the partial exception of the first one) been extremely well-done. In many ways they feel like completely new, modern RTSes, while retaining the spirit that made them great back in the late '90s/early '00s.

Yup. Birds are reptiles! If you want to define a monophyletic clade that includes crocodiles and lizards, there is no way to do that without also including birds. To define a clade, you take the evolutionary tree and make a “cut” somewhere on it. Everything below that cut is part of the same clade, you can’t selectively remove some branches but not others, unless it’s by changing where you make your single cut.

So in this diagram:

The green circle notwithstanding, you would usually define reptile as a cut at the “C” on the diagram. You could put the cut at Lepidosauria, but that would mean crocodiles and turtles are no longer considered reptiles either.

A more zoomed-in look would show that after crocodiles and birds branched apart, you also get another branch where pterosaurs branch away from dinosaurs, and that birds are one of many branches and subbranches of dinosaur.

2.5 years since the gambling report was handed down.

6 months is how long Parliamentary rules say Government has to respond to a report.

Still no response to any of its recommendations.

uh, slugs are bugs

I’mma be honest, I would not instinctively agree with this.

Sure, but we’re having this conversation in 2025, after phylogenetic classification has long since taken over as the way we describe the relations between species.

Birds are unambiguously reptiles.

Mammals are not reptiles, but are the most closely-related animals to them.

as far apart as you are from a reptile

That would mean…not very. Reptiles are an extremely broad and diverse group, containing everything from penguins and crocodiles to tuataras and pythons. Mammals are the most closely-related extant clade that is generally not considered “reptile”, to reptiles.

Arachnids, on the other hand, are more distantly related to insects. Crustaceans form their closest relatives, followed by myriapods (centipedes & millipedes). Only then do arachnids appear.

Yup! The last balance & patch update was in October 2024. Early 2024 they announced there would be a new DLC in late 2024. Prior to the patch, also in October 2024, they announced the DLC was delayed, before in January 2025 it was cancelled entirely.

Prior to that, in August 2023 it went free-to-play with a limited rotating roster of civs, with the option to pay to unlock fully. And it received its last DLC in May 2022.

AoE2 and 4 are both still receiving regular updates, as is Age of Mythology. Though only 2 and 4 are getting representation at the Wololo tournament at the Royal Albert Hall early next year.

Ok but “bug” has multiple meanings, and almost nobody means “hemiptera” when they say it. More commonly, it’s any terrestrial arthropod. Arachnids are bugs. Centipedes are definitely bugs.

Heck, there’s a broader definition that basically includes all arthropods. “Moreton bay bugs” are a popular food this time of year. And they’re a kind of lobster.

No, they were killed because the murderers fell for the Israeli antisemitic lie. The idea that all actions of Israel are necessarily representative of all Jews. The same lie that you are spreading here by assuming that because the victims were Jews, and because I put a portion of the blame on Israel, I must be blaming the victims. Even though the victims’ position on Israel is not known.

Crossherd #282
🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛️
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
⬛️🟩🟩🟩🟩
Time: 0:36
crossherd.clevergoat.com 🐐

Context: in early 2024, at a franchise-wide presentation, World’s Edge announced an upcoming AoE3 DLC which would include Denmark and Poland. A year later, they announced that the DLC had been cancelled, and they implied all future development on AoE3 had also been ceased.

In a post last week, World’s Edge announced AoE4 would be getting two new DLC next year. The second one will include 2 new civs, one of which will be “Vikings”. This rather busy thread on the official forums is titled ‘please don’t call them “vikings”’, on the basis that aoe4 civs are usually named after specific polities, not general cultures like aoe2 civs. And that “vikings” doesn’t even refer to a general culture, but to a specific activity/occupation. Instead, they should be called “Norsemen”, “Northmen”, or “Danes”. Names that were actually used historically to refer to the societies responsible for viking.

¿Que?