InsectNet forum

Semantics. It’s what tells everyone you have no idea what you’re talking about.


“Scientists Discovered 7,000-Year-Old Mummies in the Desert That Don’t Share DNA With Modern Humans“


The article of course reveals what you’d expect.


https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc ... mmies-dna/


But the title screams “I’m a moron!”

Maybe I missed something. Not that journalists have issues, but isn't it logical that 7000 yr old people wouldn't have modern DNA?
Titles can be fun though, on the NextDoor Neighbor site I've been using, there was just a post about an article, It's political, so I'll skip it,
but all you had to do was simply read the title and let it sink in, and just be glad you probably don't know these people personally.

We share DNA with mice.

As far as the NextDoor forum, that’s the bottom of the bottom that makes Farsebook look brilliant. It scares me how stupid some people in my town are.

Chuck wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 6:14 pm he NextDoor forum, that’s the bottom of the bottom that makes Farsebook look brilliant. It scares me how stupid some people in my town are.

I know, I just started using the site again after about 5 years, it was bad then, and it's worse now, I don't even recall what made me visit the site again.

Hi All,

The ability to write is a dying art. I went to the pharmacy today to pick up a prescription and there was a sign reading "Respiratory illnesses are up in your area. Protect yourself today by asking your pharmacist to get a vaccination." So, I asked the pharmacist if she had her vaccines. She stared at me for a moment and then gave me a surly "yes". I explained to her that I was just following the sign's directions. Got another blank stare...

Ciao,
Bandrow

bandrow wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 2:30 am Hi All,

The ability to write is a dying art. I went to the pharmacy today to pick up a prescription and there was a sign reading "Respiratory illnesses are up in your area. Protect yourself today by asking your pharmacist to get a vaccination." So, I asked the pharmacist if she had her vaccines. She stared at me for a moment and then gave me a surly "yes". I explained to her that I was just following the sign's directions. Got another blank stare...

Ciao,
Bandrow

Couldn't agree more, bad grammar is one of my pet hates too. It particularly annoys me when people walk into a shop and say "Can I get...". I sometimes wish I worked there so I could say "No, it's OK, I'll get it for you - it's my job."

...but I'd like to point out that this doesn't apply to anyone here whose first language is not English. You all do a lot better with English than we could with your languages.

bandrow wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 2:30 am Hi All,

The ability to write is a dying art.
Bandrow

The butterfly zoo in Rochester, NY has on display a journal written by a 12 YO boy about a century ago. The grammar is expressive and broad, and the writing well thought out. It's said, and has been said for decades, that newspapers are written at the 5th grade level; this may well be the case, but 1920s 5th grade level is a marked elevation above that of today.

Publications in the form of books express, I presume, both the ability of the writer and the audience. So much authorship of very popular (particularly fiction) written over the past 30 years is horrible...but it's popular. I read non-fiction, primarily history, and find it interesting to observe how it's changed- even into the 1800s writers were not adept at grammar or spelling; the early 1900s had exceptional writers like Jack London, and into the 1950s James Michener used similar styles; that said, history writers into the 1990s at least were dry- they wrote fact, not exciting. "Guns of August" is a good example, well written but pretty dry. I must say that the more recent top-level non-fiction writers like Philbrick, Bradly, and Spurr have reached an unprecedented level of detail with riveting writing.

Yet, when I look at "journalists" from the 1970s through today, there is no comparison. The early journalists, particularly "investigative journalists" were intelligent; their publications were well researched and presented holistically. Today, they aren't that bright, and apparently cannot write well either. This goes for the editors too- every day I ask myself "how did this make it through editing?"

I wonder, if the ease of a word processor to throw words on "paper" if it hasn't dumbed down an entire class of writers.

My daughter wants to go to college for journalism, and I'm against it. Besides AI taking over drafting of publications, she'd be in a career field with bottom of the barrel people, in a field that asks only for bottom of the barrel product.

You would think that people with journalism degrees could write and spell, but not so. I notice grammatical mistakes every day in print and on television. Chuck, I hope your daughter listens to your advice and chooses another field. If she doesn't, maybe she'll become one of the rare journalists who is actually good at her craft.

58chevy wrote: Wed Apr 16, 2025 3:11 pm You would think that people with journalism degrees could write and spell, but not so.

I'd expect it from teachers and school administrators as well, but it's not the case.

The world is awash with bottom-rate college-educated "professionals" who should be working at McDonald's.

On a positive note, I'm reading Scott Anderson's Lawrence In Arabia. Besides being well written, interesting, and fast-moving, the author repeatedly employs this neat "trick" - he uses words that look like misspellings of common words, but are, in fact, real words and are applicable to the sentence.

The thing that annoys me is the spell-check app on my desktop. When I try to make insect labels, it always changes the spelling of the Latin name to some similar English word. Plus, it usually capitalizes the species name. If I don't pay careful attention, I wind up with a bunch of worthless labels and wasted time.

58chevy wrote: Fri Apr 18, 2025 4:20 pm The thing that annoys me is the spell-check app on my desktop.

You could either turn it off or uninstall it. Alternatively there may be a setting in the app to turn off auto-editing and just highlight errors.

It's no surprise that kids nowadays can't spell or write grammatically correct sentences when apps do it all for them.

Adam.

Whenever I turn it off, my wife turns it back on.

Apparently almost no book published these days is actually edited. They seem to be full of errors -- most frequently incorrect homonyms. I suspect that a computer is doing the 'editing' and no educated person ever checks it - or cares. I try to read mostly pre-1990 books.

And don't get me started on the sad state of apostrophe usage!

jh

“extinct from 99% of its original range”

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation ... 03834.html

We recently had a basically good article in a regional daily newspaper here in Germany about insect decline, specifically about butterflies, their way of life, and so on. But here, we have some blues (Lycaenidae) that live biotically in ant nests. This was mentioned, but the fecal pellets of the caterpillars were described as the eggs of the caterpillars. Well, as you know, caterpillars lay eggs.
Best regards,
Joachim

joachim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 7:18 pm basically good article... fecal pellets of the caterpillars were described as the eggs of the caterpillars.

When I read/ see something like this, the entire article must be considered suspect and discredited. While one reader may catch such a fundamental error, how does one know what else is wrong?

This days in Spain the journalists had discover a very dangerous invader,Agrius convolvuli is migrating in big numbers in some parts of the country and they are making people get scared of moths.