It was only in 1969 (nice) that fungi officially became its own separate kingdom.

  • Fonzie!
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    843 months ago

    I overheard someone talking about veganism and said they only eat plants. I asked them about mushrooms, “of course it’s fine, those are plants”.
    No amount of convincing worked.

    So I’ve seen it once.

  • @[email protected]
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    513 months ago

    I think an issue here is that taxonomic and colloquial definitions don’t always agree.

    Spiders are colloquially bugs, but they’re not taxonomically “true bugs” (which is itself a colloquialism for Hemiptera). Tomatos are colloquially vegetables but taxonomically fruits…but afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

    And as someone else in the thread mentioned, colloquial berries are not always taxonomic berries.

    So…colloquially, “plants” sorta means, “macroscopic multicellular living non-animal thing,” but taxonomically it’s something else.

    • @[email protected]
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      83 months ago

      If you’re talking about tomatoes, the difference is the context, and it isn’t a choice between colloquial vs scientific taxonomy, but between culinary/nutritional vs botany/taxonomy (and). You can talk about either in a colloquial context or a formal context, though generally there isn’t much reason to talk about botany in a colloquial setting.

      From a nutritional perspective, mushrooms are generally considered vegetables, too.

      afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

      I thought you were wrong but I looked it up and I appear to have been mistaken. It makes “tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables” sound nonsensical, as it implies that “vegetable” is a different taxonomical option, when really it’s just a word for objects with a particular collection of traits that are relevant in a different context. What we should he saying is “While tomatoes are not fruit in the food pyramid, taxonomically, they are.” Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though. Maybe “Tomatoes are vegetables AND fruits!” would solve that?

      • TeoTwawki
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        153 months ago

        but what about berry club? which things count as berries now?

    • @[email protected]
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      73 months ago

      Similarly, “a planet” can be understood in technical or colloquial context which changes the meaning. It can have a specific meaning or a vague flexible meaning, just like with berries.

      BTW raspberries are my favorite berries… sort of. Watermelons are pretty good too.

      • @[email protected]
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        33 months ago

        Actually planet doesn’t have any hard set definition, we kind of just do it case by case because its damn near impossible to come up with a rigid definition that doesn’t suddenly classify some planets as moons or some moons as planets or create weird situations in which an object can switch between the two.

        • wanderer
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          43 months ago

          The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defined in August 2006 that, in the Solar System, a planet is a celestial body that:

          1. is in orbit around the Sun,
          2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
          3. has “cleared the neighbourhood” around its orbit.

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

          • @[email protected]
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            53 months ago

            And in that same article:

            It has been argued that the definition is problematic because it depends on the location of the body: if a Mars-sized body were discovered in the inner Oort cloud, it would not have enough mass to clear out a neighbourhood that size and meet criterion 3. The requirement for hydrostatic equilibrium (criterion 2) is also universally treated loosely as simply a requirement for roundedness; Mercury is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium, but is explicitly included by the IAU definition as a planet

            • Draconic NEO
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              22 months ago

              That’s not even addressing the issue of rogue planets which were ejected from their star system. Many estimates say they outnumber the stars. Obviously when a planet is ejected it doesn’t just disintegrate but by that poor definition it’s no longer a ““planet””, so it’s clearly a problematic definition.

  • TheLowestStone
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    383 months ago

    Fuck you op. Mushrooms are plants, Pluto is a planet, and that’s the truth from one edge of this flat Earth to the other.

    ~disclaimer: this is a joke~

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)
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      123 months ago

      Honestly? Flat earth? It’s not even funny as a joke. That entire movement has been so incredibly detrimental, and dangerous. It has shattered families, and been an instruction manual for other conspiracy theorists. And the worst thing of all is that it makes actual, real facts about how the earth is in, in reality, a hollow shell with a breathable atmosphere in its inferior, come across as just as crazy as flat earth. How are we supposed to spread the truth of hollow earth when flat earthers are out there making us look crazy? Just because hollow earth also points out that the government is lying about the earth doesn’t mean we’re the same! People need to know about hollow earth! Otherwise, we’ll never be able to heal the housing market by building condos inside the earth!

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)
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      43 months ago

      Honestly? Flat earth? It’s not even funny as a joke. That entire movement has been so incredibly detrimental, and dangerous. It has shattered families, and been an instruction manual for other conspiracy theorists. And the worst thing of all is that it makes actual, real facts about how the earth is in, in reality, a hollow shell with a breathable atmosphere in its inferior, come across as just as crazy as flat earth. How are we supposed to spread the truth of hollow earth when flat earthers are out there making us look crazy? Just because hollow earth also points out that the government is lying about the earth doesn’t mean we’re the same! People need to know about hollow earth! Otherwise, we’ll never be able to heal the housing market by building condos inside the earth!

  • @[email protected]
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    233 months ago

    Pluto is a planet, though. It’s officially considered a “dwarf” planet, and as “dwarf” is just an adjective, it’s still a planet (just like a short person is still a person). The other 8 new dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna) are also all planets - so we have 17 planets total.

    Seriously, though. By the same 3 criteria that Pluto isn’t a planet, Mercury isn’t (as it isn’t in hydrostatic equilibrium).

    • Draconic NEO
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      113 months ago

      Let’s just acknowledge that anything big enough to be round is a planet. That’s the bare minimum criteria.

      Orbit shapes and clear paths don’t matter, the Solar system isn’t a typical stellar system, many aren’t so stable and ordered, especially in binary and triplet star systems. So the pedantry around the shapes of the orbits of the outer kuiper planets is a very silly thing to argue about. After all most orbits in binary and triplet systems aren’t even predictable long term, let alone not circular.

        • @[email protected]
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          3 months ago

          I believe the rule of thumb is binary planets’ barycentre is external to either body. This is the case with Pluto/Charon, I think it’s also the case with Earth/Moon.

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              Yeah, I went and checked after posting.

              My hunch is that if the moon was closer it would ‘drag’ the barycentre closer to the moon.

              Which, given the moon is slowly receeding, means it was probably a binary early on in the formation of the solar system.

              • @[email protected]
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                3 months ago

                Other way around, the further apart the objects are the less likely the barycentre is to be inside one of them, you can picture it as a rubber band with a dot drawn on it, the more you stretch it the further the dot gets from both ends even if it gets further from one end faster.

          • @leftzero
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            13 months ago

            That’s a good rule of thumb… but it’s probably not enough; no reasonable definition would call Jupiter a star, or even a brown dwarf, or the Solar System a binary system, yet the Sol - Jupiter barycentre is outside the sun… (the whole system’s barycentre is sometimes inside the sun, but that’s due to Saturn’s, Uranus’, and Neptune’s pulls cancelling Jupiter’s).

            I’d call the barycentre thing a necessary but not sufficient requirement; a proper definition of double planet should probably also take into account other factors like the relative mass and density of the bodies, and their minimum and maximum distance.

  • @[email protected]
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    173 months ago

    The definition of planet is completely subjective, whereas the definition of mushroom is based on science and evolution.

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      Some people believe the earth is flat, I don’t think whether the definition is scientific or not matters much lmao

    • Draconic NEO
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      12 months ago

      Planet used to mean wandering star, referring to ‘stars’ that didn’t stay in one place but moved around with the days, months, years, or centuries. Obviously not a useful definition these days, I consider a planet a rocky body big enough that it’s gravity makes it almost perfectly round.

  • @[email protected]
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    93 months ago

    …this would trigger a friend of mine so badly (fungi enthusiast and Pluto stan). I want to send it, but at the same time… I’m not sure I’d hear the end of it.

    • @[email protected]
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      3 months ago

      Send it and report back. I am interested in subscribing to their newsletter. You’ll let them know, right?

      • lurch (he/him)
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        43 months ago

        Except, in cheese and some sausages. Also, I’m not sure yeast counts, because it’s usually dead by the time we eat it in our food.

        • @[email protected]
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          53 months ago

          not sure yeast counts because it’s usually dead

          As long as the organism is dead, we’re not eating it? Time to have some steak then, surely that’s not a cow!

          • lurch (he/him)
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            23 months ago

            lol, yeah, but when baking, the yeast gets destroyed pretty bad. i didn’t dare call it yeast at that point, but maybe you’re right.