• Agent641@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    In Australia the spiders don’t eat bugs, they mostly eat low flying birds and posties

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Rattling off insect classifications while a simple pun goes over you’re head is a great demonstration of the difference between knowledge and intelligence.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      Ignorance is bliss (oh no wait the other one riiiight that makes more sense)

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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    21 hours ago

    “Bug” is a folksy word for any invertebrate with 6 or more legs. For example, they call lobsters and crayfish bugs.

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I’ve learned recently that “Vegetable” is kind of like that too. Like most vegetables are fruits, seeds, leaves, roots, etc etc. Vegetable is a culinary term, not a botanical one, and it’s still foggy. It’s basically a plant that isn’t sweet, but they also call sweet corn a vegetable so whatever.

      • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
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        8 hours ago

        Not only is vegetable like that, but “fruit” is like that too. Notably, apples and strawberries are not botanical fruits, each little “seed” on the strawberry is the fruit, and the section of core around each apple seed.

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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        6 hours ago

        The human being shares 70% of the DNA with a potato, some people many more

    • Iunnrais@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      If a pillbug/rollypoly/potato bug/doodlebug/ <whatever your region calls it> is a bug? Then lobsters and crabs are absolutely bugs. This actually doesn’t bother me.

      • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Lobsters and Crabs are 100% giant sea insects. Shrimp are basically giant sea gnats. They are tasty and provide nutrients. No problem there. Plenty of cultures eat land insects.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      bug is typically something that stings, while insect is more generic.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Well no but yes.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera

        Hemiptera (/hɛˈmɪptərə/; from Ancient Greek hemipterus ‘half-winged’) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising more than 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from 1 mm (0.04 in) to around 15 cm (6 in), and share a common arrangement of piercing-sucking mouthparts.[3] The name “true bugs” is sometimes limited to the suborder Heteroptera.[4]

        But wasps can sting and they’re not bugs. They can also bite. So the key part is piercing with their mouth. For true bugs (as in the biological sense)

        • BanMe@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Whenever I hold up a bug, and say to everyone, “Look, a bug, of the true order of bugs,” everyone leaves the room because I’m doing the bug speech again

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            Yeah that’s because that sounds funny. You should change it to something like “look, a bug. And I say that as this is a member of the order ‘hemiptera’, also known as ‘true bugs.’”

            Or perhaps it’s just your face? People listen to me quite easily.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          i said typically, and colloquially. literally zero people refer to hemiptera specifically when they say bug. if you look at the american heritage dictionary, that’s the exact order used in the definitions:

          #bug
          /bŭg/

          noun

          1. An insect having mouthparts used for piercing and sucking, such as an aphid, a bedbug, or a stinkbug.

          2. An insect of any kind, such as a cockroach or a ladybug.

          3. A small invertebrate with many legs, such as a spider or a centipede.

          • Dasus@lemmy.world
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            11 hours ago

            American

            Very ethnocentric of you. I first heard it from Stephen Fry, so no, not literally zero people.

            Also, it’s literally the first definition there. That’s the definition of the species in hemiptera. Just because you don’t know anyone who knows orders of animals in latin doesn’t mean we don’t exist.

            I for one always enjoyed reading taxonomy, especially because sometimes translating a species can be quite weird if you don’t know the translation and have to essentially hope that the yellow-breasted warbler is the thing they also described it as in the other language. Sometimes it’s another feature.

            But I’m sure you’d know roughly what I mean if I refer to the order of primates. Possibly the infraorder cetacean as well. Especially if you’ve watched Star Trek religiously.

            Stephen Fry on Insects, and the beauty of nature and Evolution

            That’s the wrong clip but i can’t be arsed to find it

      • T156@lemmy.world
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        19 hours ago

        Not always. Flies, ants, and mosquitoes are all considered bugs, despite having no stinging capacity to speak of.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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          12 hours ago

          ants…having no stinging capacity

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

        • remon@ani.social
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          19 hours ago

          Ants can definitely sting. Not all of them (some just spray acid or use their jaws to bite) but others have literal stingers.

  • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Telling someone to drink less beer and study more is wild.

    Academics in general have a long history of being alcoholics or alcoholic adjacent

    • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      20 hours ago

      There are three types of academics, ones that are addicted to alcohol, ones that are addicted to caffeine, and ones that are addicted to both.

      (For health reasons I dont reccomend both at the same time)

        • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          19 hours ago

          If you’re not joking, reach out to your college’s academic support/tutoring centers. They’re literally paid to be there and help you with your classes. Even if you understand all the class content already they can still help you with whatever you’re struggling with, like figuring out how much time a project needs or how to get it started/organized.

          I struggled my first go ‘round in college 20 years ago and wish I’d known that, now that I’m going back I’ve been using the support systems the college has a lot more and it’s been paying off.

        • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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          22 hours ago

          Heavy drinking is considered irresponsible through your bachelor’s. After that it’s considered “networking” and “building professional relationships”. With the implicit usage as a coping mechanism

          • Sc00ter@lemmy.zip
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            4 hours ago

            Not just in academia. This is true for corporate life. There are happy hours left and right which are as much networking as they are excuses to have someone else buy you drinks

    • Tire@lemmy.ml
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      21 hours ago

      “I’m not drunk, MOM! I’m just working on my PHD!”

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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      14 hours ago

      It’s a way to dull the senses to how retarded everyone around and especially above you is, maybe…until you need your plumbing done or the damn printer fixed 😅

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 day ago

    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.

        • madjo@feddit.nl
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          8 hours ago

          You’re already eating bugs, in fact the FDA has so-called “food defect action levels”, which define the acceptable levels of food “contamination” from sources such as maggot and insect fragments among other things (best not to think too hard about it) in your daily food.

    • stray@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      The ocean is quite literally lousy with sea lice. They’ve even got rolly-pollies down there.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      24 hours ago

      I make a point of referring to birds as “feather-bugs”, much to the weary resignation of my RL friends.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        18 hours ago

        the birds and the bugs

        i don’t actually know why it’s called “the birds and the bees” (am not american, never had it in school) but i suspect it stands for the big and little flying things?

        • stray@pawb.social
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          8 hours ago

          We don’t really know where the phrase came from. My guess is that they’re things from nature that alliterate, which makes it sound cute and innocent.

          • CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social
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            34 minutes ago

            Birds, mostly males, get all flashy and showy to attract a mate, and bees all answer to the matriarch of the family, so it’s just like life. Obviously.

            Maybe the saying came from the mirror universe…

    • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Where I live, the definition of a bug is super liberal to the point of absurdity.

      But even that’s been topped a few times over the years. When I used to be active on Reddit, I would participate in the “bug” identification sub. It wasn’t frequent, but it also wasn’t all the uncommon for folks to show up asking for ID on reptiles and amphibians, even remember that a shrew (or maybe it was some other small mammal) was posted once.

      It wasn’t that big of a surprise for me. I used to work retail decades ago and I remember a customer who returned a bag of salad greens because there was a bug in it. The “bug” was a very small baby frog (just out of tadpole stage) – likely some kind of tree frog.

        • stray@pawb.social
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          21 hours ago

          I would. I think that just goes to show how informal and unworthy of policing the term is. We even call viruses bugs a lot of the time.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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            18 hours ago

            yeah, i would say “a bug is something that annoys you” so a virus could maybe be perceived as a bug as well, though i also would like to point out that “annoy” does not mean “i don’t like it”. it’s like doing sports, it can be painful but also very fun

          • smh@slrpnk.net
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            5 hours ago

            I’m trying to square my instinct that

            1. snails aren’t bugs (because they’re squishy without the shell) with the feeling that
            2. crabs are bugs (because they’d go tap-tap if you tapped on their exoskeleton with a finger) but
            3. hermit crabs aren’t bugs if they’re in a shell but are bugs if they’re naked
            • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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              2 hours ago

              Snail shells aren’t chitinous.

              Crab shells are chitinous.

              Hermit crabs are only partly chitinous, and the shells they use are not chitinous.

              Hope that helps

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      “Bugs” even refers to errors on computers. Funny how the pedants don’t go into computer forums and berate the coders for using “bug” incorrectly.

    • redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      23 hours ago

      I just watched a mad scientists refer to shrimp, lobster and coconut crab as bugs for the purpose of making giant insects.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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    16 hours ago

    I know anti-intellectualism plays into this somewhere somehow.

    … I’m just not sure where and how.

    “When you argue with fools, others may not be able to tell who’s the fool.”

  • wagesj45@fedia.io
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    1 day ago

    Sometimes calling someone a big dumb bitch is the only appropriate course of action.

  • smeg@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    Does “bug” have a technical definition? If so then it’s news to me and everyone who uses it to mean pretty much any small invertebrate (or microorganism, or software defect).

      • smeg@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        Entomologists reserve the term bug for Hemiptera or Heteroptera, which does not include other arthropods or insects of other orders such as ants, bees, beetles, or butterflies. In some varieties of English, all terrestrial arthropods (including non-insect arachnids and myriapods) also fall under the colloquial understanding of bug.

        Sounds like those entomologists should have tried a bit harder either in educating the masses or choosing names!

        • YoiksAndAway@piefed.zip
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          18 hours ago

          In my experience academics will often refer to hemiptera as “true bugs”, and not get too didactic about it other than that.

        • Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
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          18 hours ago

          Not really fair to blame academics for common misuse of a term from their respective field, they’re all vastly outnumbered and people can be extremely stubborn when being corrected on terminology

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 day ago
    Transcription

    Three Tweets, each replying to the previous.

    By “you’re right, i’m wrong” @OkBu…:

    what kind of beer do spiders drink? bug lite

    By “Mentally Healthy” @EAT_ROAD…:

    bad joke, spiders are not bugs only insects of the order hemiptera classified as bugs and spiders aren’t even insects. maybe if you drank fewer beer and spent more time studying you would know that but it’s your life

    by “you’re right, i’m wrong” @OkButStill:

    they eat bugs you big dumb bitch

  • scytale@piefed.zip
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    1 day ago

    So you’re telling me people who drink Bud Light eat their buds? <insert lenny face>