For insects, the Amazon’s canopy contains a dazzling multiverse | Hacker News Reader

For insects, the Amazon’s canopy contains a dazzling multiverse

nationalgeographic.com

Sadly the Amazon is slowly being destroyed. How many species will vanish before anyone even knows they went away. How many of them will turn out to be important but we will only see the after effects.

I wonder if the current rate of destruction > renewal and what the rate is.

What's crazy about this is that we're simultaneously discovering just how diverse and potentially useful that biodiversity is - the field of Metagenomics, which started in the early 2000s, is effectively the practice of taking environmental samples and just sequencing every bit of DNA that can be extracted. It's one of the most interesting and promising areas of research in biotech right now, and it's enormously increasing the library of enzymes and interesting chemistry we potentially have access to. At this point, it feels like a dead sprint to gather and sample as much biomass as we can before it gets sold off and turned "more economically useful land."

I'm Brazilian, living in Brazil, and I wouldn't mind heavy economic sanctions imposed on my country to force us to take preservation seriously. Our government will say "the first world countries destroyed all its forests to become developed. Why can't we?" and I wouldn't mind those countries replying "Sure you can, go ahead, but so can we economically sanction you as heavy as we think is necessary to make you chance." This president is a joke regarding the environment. A joke. Outside of environmental concerns, here are some pearls: his Minister for Women, Family and Human Rights said on a lecture how Disney's Frozen movie shouldn't be watched by girls, because the princess who lives alone in a castle an isn't married is obviously lesbian, and Disney is out to brainwash girls. This is not out of the ordinary for her to say. The president of the state foundation for the preservation and promotion of african-brazilian culture has said that slavery was good for africans. The Environment Minister was caught hearing during a crisis that, since the focus wasn't on the environment, they should seize the moment to 'steamroll' over environmental legislation because few would notice. How do you expect the Amazon situation to not get worse with this guy in power?

It's typical rhetoric for (what I'm calling) the neo-reactionary movement worldwide. You'll notice they all use the same tactics.

The words are not meant to convey meaning, they are weapons, meant to disrupt you. If other words or the opposite words disrupted you, they would use those. The trick is not to look past the words at the speaker: Why are they saying it? Who does it benefit and how? The words themselves are meaningless; they are wadded up pieces of paper thrown at you; they are as meaningful as text printed on a bullet aimed at you.

So have heart, the people are not crazy. They don't believe those things, they just are tactically saying what is most disruptive to you - which in part is done by making others think they are crazy beyond control or reason.

No, no, no, no, no... you're wrong here. Mrs. Damares Alves, Minister of Woman, Family and Human Rights Cabinet really believes this stuff. She believes it 100%. And when Bolsonaro (the president) says that men wouldn't be gay if they were beaten enough as children whenever they did feminine stuff, he says it with conviction. He really believes this stuff. A lot of his tactics are just copied from Seteve Bannon/Trump (Bolsonaro actually hired Bannon), but the difference is that he actually believes 100% in the ideological views he espouses. If you elect a hardline evangelical fanatic to the White House, and he starts spewing bible stuff, would you say he doesn't believe it, it's just politics?

> No, no, no, no, no... you're wrong here. Mrs. Damares Alves, Minister of Woman, Family and Human Rights Cabinet really believes this stuff.

That's what the targets of the rhetoric say every time. You are playing exactly the role they want.

> he says it with conviction

Yes, that's exactly how you do it. It wouldn't work without the conviction. IMHO past a certain threshold, the more conviction, the more likely they are trying to demonstrate conviction that isn't here. the lady doth protest too much, methinks, as Shakespeare wrote about it centuries ago.

Right, religious fanatics don't really exist, it's just rhetoric. You can confirm this by noticing how they never really blow themselves up. All the temples from african religions that are burned or destroyed every year in my country is just a made up thing, since the fanatical christians who burn them don't really do it, I'm just falling for their rhetoric. I don't know how it is going in other countries, but religious fanatics have held positions of power here, quite a few times.

I don't know about you in particular, but IME people seem strongly invested in taking the rhetoric at face value. The reactionaries advance not only unopposed, but aided by their enemies and victims.

This is a really great book from an ardent canopy explorer: https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/bio...

is Amazon Canopy a new AWS feature?

You've been to the cloud - come down to the canopy.

Canopy Multiverse, from Amazon.

This is a terrible use of the word multiverse. Perhaps it's for SEO reasons? "Multiverse" is a bit of a hot word lately.

That might be a good topic for a book: how search optimization effects language.

title of the book: You Won't Believe How SEO Effects The Way We Speak And Think!

Even worse, Amazon the company is so economically/culturally dominant that I immediately thought of Amazon the company rather than the most important rainforest on earth. I almost wish we could force amazon the company to change its name.

I've wondered about this too. It like the company doesn't even pay any attention to the connection with the actual Amazon. If it put 10% of its annual profits into it it could literally save the forest. Imagine that, the symbolism, the credibility it would gain.

Don’t they have an incentive to destroy the rainforest in order to protect their trademark?

Killer Bug Revealed in Amazon Top Layer Environment

I agree. You should see the multiverse of moulds, spores and fungus in the bottom of my refrigerator.

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