Supposedly someone donated $1mil to the project to eliminate predators/turn them into herbivores. Imagine the good money like that could have done for actual conservation projects instead of this nonsense.
Why support actual conservation when you can fund nonsense like this instead? đŹđŹđŹ
In the UK there are around 430,000 foxes. Each fox must eat an average of 8 rodents a day. That means you would need to release over 3.4 million of these robotic rodents every single day just to feed one species in one country.
Now scale that up and imagine how many billions of these youâd need to feed every predator in every country. Itâs beyond stupid.
On the flip side, if one of these robotic rodents = one real life mouse or rat saved:
One female mouse can have up to 10 litters in a year, with numbers ranging typically from 5-14 pups each (average number that survive is closer to 7 or 8, but weâll go with 8)
Numbers are very similar for rats, so weâll just go with the above numbers.
Since obviously predatory species arenât taking out every single rodent ever, we can assume that each of these rodents has the capacity to become a breeding pair with a rodent that would otherwise not be eaten.
So if these robots fed the foxes of the UK and totaled to 3.4 million robots in a year, and each robot is equal to one mouse or rat savedâŚ
Roughly 8 pups per litter x 10 litters per year = 80 new mice added to the population per breeding adult mouse per year
3.4 million rats/mice saved from being eaten by foxes x 80 new mice added to the population per breeding adult mouse saved = 272,000,000 (272 million) new mice/rats added to the population for every year this project is a success.
And this is just the number OP stated for foxes in the UK alone. There are many other predatory species living in the UK (both native such as owls and other raptors, and invasive such as domestic and feral cats), some of which rely solely on mice or rats. The amount of mice and rats consumed total by every predatory species in the UK alone is probably in the mid-to-high millions, and as Iâm sure everyone knows, there are still plenty of mice and rats in the country. If the predators of the UK would be made to instead start hunting robotic mice and rats, weâre talking potentially many multiple billions of new mice and rats added to the breeding population every year in the UK alone.
Thatâs not good for people, since wild mice and rats can carry fatal diseases, but itâs also not good for the wild mice and rats as they suddenly need to compete even more heavily with each other for resources and have more chance of spreading diseases and parasites to each other. Not to mention, with all of these new rodents needing to eat, we would see significantly more crop damage and loss, and there would be significant damage and loss to native plant species as well. Also, this should go without saying, but predatory species typically physically are incapable of surviving solely on plant matter, especially when relegated plant matter found in their natural habitats.
This entire project, if ever taken seriously, genuinely attempted to be implemented, and even in some slight way were to become successful, would be a disaster and a death sentence to the whole of nature and ecology as we know it.
Oh donât worry, they have a solution to that!
They believe they can control the fertility of every single wild animal on earth using birth control and/or biomedical engineering. Cause thatâs totally feasible. And even if it was somehow possible, imagine the costs of having to give birth control to billions and billions of animals worldwide. Where would the money and resources from that come from? Is that really the best use of government money when there are millions of people starving and living in poverty or on the streets?
That is actually literally the person who made me question if my emotional responses to someone âbeing wrongâ were normal because there is NO possibility any of their plans will ever happen and theyâre not yet harming anyone by just having this positively absurd ideological obsession, but instead of being funny or silly to me I violently despise them for thinking this asinine ridiculous garbage and for not loving nature exactly the way nature is. Having talked to a couple of their followers they arenât a joke and I want them to die of flesh eating bacteria.
Hearing about gaming websites being suspected of using Chat GPT to write articles about, like, ‘how to do xyz thing in game’ and reading about people being accused of using Chat GPT to write soulless emails for them really gives me the feeling that if something *can* be replaced with Chat GPT, then it probably *shouldn’t* be done, like at all. Maybe *nobody* should be writing buzzfeed articles, whether it’s underpaid journalists cranking out a new low-effort article every 10 minutes at a breakneck pace or if its a robot doing the same thing. Maybe nobody should be doing this, like morally speaking.
People who act like Laika’s sacrifice was some unique soviet cruelty are being silly and need to re-evaluate how history’s been presented to them. Animal testing of flight exploration has always been the norm, and the reason has always been that it is dangerous and could easily lead to death. Two-thirds of the monkeys the US launched on its repurposed Nazi V-2s died. The dogs the USSR launched into space before Laika were recovered, and were in fact the first higher animals to be recovered from a spaceflight, as all the US’s monkeys so far had died - not a single monkey would survive US spaceflight until two years after Laika’s flight. These animals were all sent into space, but only briefly, in a ballistic trajectory. Laika was sent into orbit. Laika’s ship was the second ever to reach orbit, after Sputnik 1. It was not possible at the time to recover anything from orbit. The next Sputnik flight with animal passengers, Korabl-Sputnik 2, successfully recovered the first ever animals from orbit. Laika was the one lone point at which recovery was not planned - the pivotal one, where we had finally been able to reach orbit, to be able to stay in space, not just pass through it; but could not yet bring anything back. If survival were impossible up there, it may not have been worth it to continue. Yes, they knew Laika would die - but, empirically speaking, so did the US for each and every monkey it had launched. Survival was not the norm, and was a feat achieved so far only a few times, by the USSR. It is sad, yes, and perhaps unethical - but it was in no way unique.
Ben Drowned is hands-down one of the funniest creepypastas ever because like. it singlehandedly cemented the setup of “woah guys i found this N64 game at a garage sale and it’s HAUNTED!!!!” as a cliche. this guy named Jadusable kept posting videos showing his copy of Majora’s Mask with fucked up glitches, like Link being constantly on fire and screaming, or having his upper body rotated 90 degrees, or having NPCs say ominous shit to him, etc. you really need to watch the original video for the full experience (assuming you havent already), but if you haven’t, at least watch this one starting around 2:30:
so Jadusable posts the “final” update to his story and his forum account goes dark. in the canon of his creepypasta, he’s straight up dead (killed by the haunted game cartridge), and he seems to be sticking to it by not posting anything. theories ran wild - was it an elaborate scam? could it have all been true?
years later, on April 1st 2012, with no announcement or fanfare, Jadusable posts the following video, “king kong.wmv”, following the naming scheme of his previous videos. skip to 1:30ish.
when i tell you the people who took the creepypasta seriously for years were MAD mad
iâm not saying people canât have fun with Universes Beyond cards. what i am saying is that they are blatant cashgrabs and look bad. also most UB sets have had a few cards pushed enough to end up in eternal formats (so they can upcharge to players as well as collectors) so âif you donât like the cards donât play with themâ is not a valid argument and makes you look very stupid for even suggesting it.
you are the same person who sent me this ask a week ago defending your God-given right to do the speed limit in the passing lane. do you pick all of your opinions out of the same dumpster, or is it more of a âwhichever one is closestâ type thing?
Your argument reads more like âCard look badâ than anything about it being a cash grab. Iâll cede that the card type being two words is awful for readability but I donât hate how it looks since it feels like it fits well with anything else Doctor Who.
I do agree that these shouldnât be format legal, though. Should just be collector stuff for folks whoâre really into the game or cards like the Godzilla or Dracula ones thatâre just stand-ins for other cards. I donât really want to play against stuff from other universes in a regular game of Magic but I guess they need it to have some kind of value for people to actually buy it.
As far as my other arguments about WotC, Iâd really rather they fuck off from doing anything like this in the future and concentrate on new content. Their entire roadmap for the next year is either more UE stuff or âreturn to [x]â sets. Theyâre giving Disney energy and it sucks.
Also no, you were right on the merging thing, I looked into it more and I was just completely wrong. My bad there. People around here do drive like fuckinâ morons though.
okay first off thank you so much for learning + apologizing about the road thing, that was where most of my ire stemmed from since it was actually dangerous behavior and i have no beef with you otherwise. with that in mind, sorry for wording the initial answer so harshly, and i donât want anyone sending this person hate.
as for your first paragraph, youâre correct that my argument was just âcard look badâ because the post you sent this ask about was, in fact, me just remarking that that specific printing of that card looked Bad (independent of Universes Beyond tie-ins) and not an argument against UB as a whole. iirc the last time we saw the card name and type lines in all caps + a different font was the Amonkhet Invocations set, which was pretty widely panned at the time as ânot looking like a Magic cardâ, and that combined with the weird border shape and art extending out of the frame gave heavy r/custommtg vibes.
my arguments against Universes Beyond in general are pretty much in line with yours, insofar as itâs VERY transparent that WOTC is chasing the money and even more cringe of them to pretend like they arenât. a child could follow WOTCâs logical train of thought here:
as SL:TWD showed, we could make a bunch of money from licensing deals with other IPs on MTG cards [The Walking Deadâs IP is also owned by Hasbro, so that first Secret Lair was a test case they ran to advertise its success to outside IPs]
but we canât hinge our sales entirely on collectors/fans of the outside IP, we need to make the cards themselves good enough mechanically to appeal to competitive Magic players so they buy packs as well
but as we also learned from SL:TWD, there are a LOT of Magic players who actively oppose the inclusion of these Universes Beyond cards, and they would feel betrayed by us if we pushed those cards hard enough that they saw regular play
oh wait we ran the numbers and the groups from point 2 bring in more money than the group from point 3, so just disregard the latter entirely lol
(2 years later) hey why do most of our vocal fans and content creators hate us?
to be clear, i donât personally care that much about the sanctity of the âfantasy of the gameâ to the point where my immersion is ruined when the person across the table sleeves up a WH40K commander. iâm here to play a card game, not roleplay a wizard; at worst iâll roll my eyes a bit and move on. but there ARE a LOT of people out there who are there to roleplay a wizard, and theyâre peeved by it! and what DOES piss me off personally is watching the way WOTC has treated those fans; namely, by alternately lying to their faces (weâre still patiently waiting on those Universes Here versions of the Walking Dead cards like we were promised 3 years ago) and calling them entitled. youâre literally Wizards of the Fucking Coast, dude! your success is built on the backs of autistic people using your products to pretend like theyâre casting spells! fuck!!!
the âTime Lordâ thing mostly just makes me roll my eyes because you know they would never dream of making that same exception for a product they werenât being paid to put out as advertising
Given all of the other very valid things to complain about with WotC, I'm not sure "Stop having fun with cards I don't like" is the hill to die on.
Like I don't even like Doctor Who, but this is the lowest hanging fruit possible.
iâm not saying people canât have fun with Universes Beyond cards. what i am saying is that they are blatant cashgrabs and look bad. also most UB sets have had a few cards pushed enough to end up in eternal formats (so they can upcharge to players as well as collectors) so âif you donât like the cards donât play with themâ is not a valid argument and makes you look very stupid for even suggesting it.
you are the same person who sent me this ask a week ago defending your God-given right to do the speed limit in the passing lane. do you pick all of your opinions out of the same dumpster, or is it more of a âwhichever one is closestâ type thing?
i keep coming back to this cover because it’s really good on its own merits but also. covering “Never Trust a Man Who Plays Guitar” as a woman playing a banjo without changing the lyrics is like the funniest shit you could do with that song
i get that they were trying to make the card border look like the TARDIS but i was not prepared for how fucking awful it would look having the creature name and type line be in all caps + a different font. looks bad guys đ
i get that they were trying to make the card border look like the TARDIS but i was not prepared for how fucking awful it would look having the creature name and type line be in all caps + a different font. looks bad guys đ
