 using tools, building nests.
Chimps can be trained to do those things but don't do them voluntarily in nature.
Birds and humans want to sing, dance, talk and build.
Is the gene for bipedal walking connected to those PURPOSES?
Pogrom succeeding magnificently!ZH has a genuinely shocking GIF of suicide rates from 2005 to 2015. Up everywhere except NYC, and dramatically up in the sparsely populated West. The worst areas correspond closely with Injun territory.
The speed of increase is surprising, but not the pattern.
NYC has been pogromming Deplorables for 400 years, and in 2008 decided to implement the Final Solution. Exterminate all humans. No more humans anywhere on earth. The universe must consist of NYC. Nothing but pure abstraction, infinite wealth, infinite power, for the abstract Tribe.
Results are excellent so far, but only a tiny baby step toward victory. Millions of Muslim Deplorables killed by bombs, a million** Christian Deplorables killed by drugs and suicide!
= = = = =
Incidentally, ZH fails to see the pattern. They think it's a 'tsunami' that will inevitably move toward the East Coast. Nope. It's not a tsunami, it's a state of siege. The East Coast is CONSUMING the human parts of the country. As the humans die, the East gets richer and happier.
** Does a million sound high? Current suicides are 50k per year, and drug overdose deaths also 50k per year. Both are rising quickly. Since 2008, total of both is around a million.
Rights to duties, sentiment edition
Somebody posted a Memorial Day sentiment:
It was soldiers, not reporters, who gave us freedom of the press.
First, there's no such thing as "freedom of the press". Never has been. Utterly meaningless pseudoconcept. Every country has a vast list of taboo subjects and opinions. The specific taboos vary with time and place, but the number of taboos is pretty much constant.
Second, neither soldiers nor reporters gave us the functions of the press. God gave us the functions. Every living thing, and every organized colony of living things, has 'media'.
= = = = =
Start from basics.
Why does an individual organism need senses? To answer seven important questions. The first six are universal from bacteria to humans. The seventh is not quite universal.
1. What time is it? Day or night? Winter or summer? Full moon or new? Time to fuck? Time to swarm? Time to die?
2. Where am I? Which way am I going? Up or down? Toward the light? Toward food? Toward enemies? With the magnetic field or against?
3. Where is food?
4. Where is poison?
5. Where are my friends, and what are they doing?
6. Where are my enemies, and what are they doing?
7. The non-universal non-question: Entertainment. This applies for sure to all the 'intelligent' critters from octopuses to mammals. When we're not in immediate survival mode, we love to watch stuff happening. Entertainment merges smoothly into education. Watching somebody else catch a caterpillar or hammer a nail isn't especially interesting; but when the catch misses or the hammer hits a thumb, it becomes entertainment AND education. Smart design, connecting pleasure to learning.
= = = = =
Communities or colonies have mechanisms or workers to accomplish the last five purposes on behalf of the whole community. Bees have honey scouts and enemy scouts. Mammals generally send out disposable males to locate food and enemies. Plants and bacteria and modern humans use electrical networks to observe the activities of friends and enemies.
Professional reporters have been around for 5000 years. Most of the sagas and testaments of religions are newspaper archives with the original bylines replaced by God, who is the biggest copyright troll in history. Greece and Rome elevated the role of scout to high literature. Troubadours and town criers continued the mix of art and observation until 1500 AD, when Gutenberg made it possible to shout on paper.
= = = = =
Circling back to the original question: How do modern paid reporters fulfill the basic purposes of community sensing? (Again the first two purposes are only for individuals.)
3. Where is food? Newspa