If you were so smart, you'd probably find better sources than GQ and Medium to prove your point.
morphle•Apr 15, 2026
Or Hacker News for that matter. Never trust anything on the internet [1] on face value. Start by asking qui bono? Is this a reputable source, like a scientist[2]?. Be critical and sceptical.
How can I trust someone who can't use spell check?
AftHurrahWinch•Apr 15, 2026
I regret to inform you that is the preferred spelling in British English.
morphle•Apr 15, 2026
I used four spell checkers including Apple, Wikipedia and
Google search.
Don't trust anything you read on the internet, including your comment.
tbrownaw•Apr 15, 2026
Things inside this house are indeed outside that house.
Sardtok•Apr 15, 2026
An apartment inside an apartment complex is still inside the same building. Earth is in the Universe. There's a difference between "in the Universe" and "outside of Earth".
A superset also includes everything in all its subsets.
bregma•Apr 15, 2026
Is the coffee actually in the mug or only on top of it?
treyd•Apr 15, 2026
In Spanish I don't care.
gus_massa•Apr 15, 2026
I'm confused, in es-ar, it can be:
* "El café está en la taza." [preferred]
* "El café está sobre la taza." [I'd never use this.]
* "El café está adentro de la taza."
I'd probably use "en(in?)" for a cup, "sobre(over?)" for a plate an "adentro de (inside?)" for a jar.
pests•Apr 15, 2026
Well, can you walk around inside of a coffee cup? If so, you are on it. If not, you are in it.
Some things on Earth (especially in the ocean) you'd think were extraterrestrial... What a gift to still be able to find such amazing animals out there.
squigz•Apr 15, 2026
Some of those things down in the ocean are almost too extraterrestrial... they can stay undiscovered!
pfdietz•Apr 15, 2026
They all, so far, share the same basic biochemistry, derived from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA).
What would be extraordinarily interesting would be if we could find life on Earth with a fundamentally different biochemstry. Very different genetic code, even. This would be sign that Origin of Life is not the Great Filter. And we don't even have to go to another planet to conduct this search for "alien" life.
latexr•Apr 15, 2026
Sounds like you might be interested in “The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Makes you imagine a world with high solar power density and maybe lower gravity or something where larger land animals might be realistically supplemented by solar energy as well.
tbrownaw•Apr 15, 2026
Closer to the sun (high solar power density) and smaller (lower gravity)... I think we actually have one of those nearby?
lukan•Apr 15, 2026
Some infinite water supply would be probably helpful there.
tbrownaw•Apr 15, 2026
Infinite indeed, need to keep it topped off as it all boils away.
lukan•Apr 15, 2026
Now I think of a scifi setting, where rich people use massive ressources to feed their artificial gardens on Merkur with water from comets, so the genetically engineered solar powered green butterflies in their garden can keep flying.
(But there might be more expensive adjustments needed, like rotation speed)
iwd•Apr 15, 2026
I just got to see a different species of kleptoplastic sea slugs in the wild last month, on a kayak tour of the mangroves around Key West. Our guide scooped some lettuce sea slugs up in a plastic container (and then returned them safely). They were bigger, about 3 inches long, with a wavy/frilly green border. It made my biologist heart very happy!
throwup238•Apr 15, 2026
That was likely a sea slug from the Nudibranchia order (they resemble lettuce sea slugs sometimes) which are a bit different from Sacoglassa order slugs like the one in TFA in that they carry symbiotic algae colonies, rather than digesting them and keeping the chloroplasts like Sacoglassa.
Ericson2314•Apr 15, 2026
I remember as a kid wondering if we could give humans chlorolaplasts.
rustyhancock•Apr 15, 2026
I believe that mitochondria and chloroplast both were originally independent single celled organisms.
So kind of funny that, chloroplast is being "stolen" again by this sea slug.
morphle•Apr 15, 2026
Yes, it is funny that biological history repeats itself.
The surface is too small and you only get like 4% of the energy you need (Assuming you like being naked under full sunlight all day long. The article is for cows, but I guess the number is similar for humans.) 4% of 2400 kcal is almost 100 kcal, that is the content of a small diet treat or 2 apples.
These sea slugs can survive because they move very slowly. For a human, I think it's not enough energy to survive even if all the activity is to watch TV inside a hot swimming pool.
eigenspace•Apr 15, 2026
Dietary need scales with volume, whereas incident sunlight would scale with surface area.
Assuming a spherical cow and a spherical human, the calories needed would scale with the radius cubed, whereas the calories gained from sunlight would scale with the radius squared. So while I agree this wouldn't be very many calories, even if you sat under the sun all day, I think the 4% figure is probably quite pessimistic.
pfdietz•Apr 15, 2026
The square cube law pops up all over the place, my favorite being in fusion reactors, where it is a two edged sword.
makoai•Apr 15, 2026
Real Life Bulbasaur
katspaugh•Apr 15, 2026
Probably more like モンメン (Cottonee).
hackerbeat•Apr 15, 2026
We‘re all solar—powered animals.
jimbokun•Apr 15, 2026
You know what they meant.
infogulch•Apr 15, 2026
Well it says "indirectly". How much indirect do they mean?
This is one of those times evolution doesn't make sense to me. It's clear how a giraffe's neck evolves, the ones that could reach higher leaves in trees had an advantage. In examples like this, how does this evolve when there is no gradual change? An animal had to exist that had an offspring that somehow both absorbed the chloroplasts of the food it ate in a way that it could use (not just simple digestion), then have a place to store them, then have a mechanism to move the chloroplasts to the storage space, then have the mechanisms in their body to use the energy the stored chloroplasts create. How does that happen gradually when each step is totally useless without the others?
(please note I am not challenging the scientific truth of evolution, I simply do not understand how something like this happens)
largbae•Apr 15, 2026
They look kind of translucent to me, maybe the first of this kind of slug just had a digestive problem that didn't break down the chloroplasts, and the minimal energy through their bodies made those individuals more successful because they didn't need to eat as often as those who digested theirs. Yada yada other errors among the indegestible-chloroplast population showed further advantages when it's closer to the skin, they outcompeted their peers, etc.
andy99•Apr 15, 2026
> please note I am not challenging the scientific truth of evolution
Evolution isn’t a matter of faith, you’re welcome to challenge it and try to poke holes in it.
dekhn•Apr 15, 2026
While true, the predominance of evidence for evolution has reached the point that anybody attempting to argue against it would have to produce absolutely enormous amounts of self-consistent evidence that explains our observations better than modern theories of evolution. It's sort of like the laws of thermodynamics, or relativity, or quantum physics- if you found convincing evidence that any one of those was not accurate, and came up with a better explanation, it would both completely transform science, and open up new avenues for discovery.
And if you want to do that, you should probably get a deep set of experience; otherwise, it's not much different from a flat earther.
crustaceansoup•Apr 15, 2026
The article notes that the chloroplasts are like a larder that the slug can digest when needs be, so storage could have come well before photosynthesis was actually utilized.
Or maybe it was photosynthesis first. The chloroplasts just did their thing for a while, and slugs that digested them slower (and eventually ones that stored them) got more benefit than ones that didn't.
8 Comments
[1] Pale blue dot - Carl Sagan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
[2] Point of view is worth 80 IQ points - Alan Kay. He didn't specify the sign....
[1] Why people hate smart individuals: Studies reveal it's linked to your own intelligence level https://www.gq.com.au/health/wellness/studies-say-who-you-ha...
[2] On the importance of being pedantic https://medium.com/@lfloridi/on-the-importance-of-being-peda...
[3] Pedantic definition https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pedantic
[4] Pedantic opinion https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/pedantic
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
[2] https://youtu.be/NV0Z6vlIJig?t=216
How can I trust someone who can't use spell check?
Don't trust anything you read on the internet, including your comment.
A superset also includes everything in all its subsets.
* "El café está en la taza." [preferred]
* "El café está sobre la taza." [I'd never use this.]
* "El café está adentro de la taza."
I'd probably use "en(in?)" for a cup, "sobre(over?)" for a plate an "adentro de (inside?)" for a jar.
I really like this version of it personally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg
What would be extraordinarily interesting would be if we could find life on Earth with a fundamentally different biochemstry. Very different genetic code, even. This would be sign that Origin of Life is not the Great Filter. And we don't even have to go to another planet to conduct this search for "alien" life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zoologist%27s_Guide_to_the...
(But there might be more expensive adjustments needed, like rotation speed)
So kind of funny that, chloroplast is being "stolen" again by this sea slug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiogenesis
The surface is too small and you only get like 4% of the energy you need (Assuming you like being naked under full sunlight all day long. The article is for cows, but I guess the number is similar for humans.) 4% of 2400 kcal is almost 100 kcal, that is the content of a small diet treat or 2 apples.
These sea slugs can survive because they move very slowly. For a human, I think it's not enough energy to survive even if all the activity is to watch TV inside a hot swimming pool.
Assuming a spherical cow and a spherical human, the calories needed would scale with the radius cubed, whereas the calories gained from sunlight would scale with the radius squared. So while I agree this wouldn't be very many calories, even if you sat under the sun all day, I think the 4% figure is probably quite pessimistic.
(please note I am not challenging the scientific truth of evolution, I simply do not understand how something like this happens)
Evolution isn’t a matter of faith, you’re welcome to challenge it and try to poke holes in it.
And if you want to do that, you should probably get a deep set of experience; otherwise, it's not much different from a flat earther.
Or maybe it was photosynthesis first. The chloroplasts just did their thing for a while, and slugs that digested them slower (and eventually ones that stored them) got more benefit than ones that didn't.