Thursday, June 11, 2020

Tumblr Thread: Scientific Language Is A Punny Goldmine


This fun Tumblr thread highlights how scientific language is way more punny than it gets proper credit for. Just think, if some of us had paid more attention in science classes growing up, we might've noticed all these gems. Fruity fly people sound like a whole lot of fun. 

Check out another fun thread from the brilliant minds of Tumblr that highlighted how Pokémon's probability system is madness.

1.

Text - fuckingflying I hate linguistic anthropology. Why? One of the most influential experiments in linguistic anthropology involved teaching a chimp asl. One of the most influential linguistics is named Noam Chomsky. You know what the chimp's name was? Nim Chimpsky. Fucking monkey pun.

2.

Text - And this is in textbooks, in documentaries, everywhere. And everyone just IGNORES THIS GOD AWFUL PUN cause of how important the experiment was. But BUT LOOK AT THIS SHIT. FUCKING NIM CHIMPSKY. I HATE THIS WHOLE FIELD. dendritic-trees Its not just the linguistic anthropologists.

3.

Text - There's a group of very important genes that determine if your body develops in the right shape/ organization... they are called the hedgehog genes, because fruit fly geneticists are all ridiculous. The different hedgehog genes are all named after different hedgehogs. And then someone decided to get clever and name one "sonic hedgehog" because this is just what fruitfly geneticists do.

4.

Text - Well sonic hedgehog controls brain development, and now actual doctors are stuck in the position of explaining to grieving parents that their child's lethal birth defects or life-threatening tumors are caused by a "sonic hedgehog mutation". And this is why no one will invite the fruit fly people to parties.

5.

Text - error-404-fuck-not-found Biogeochemical scientists, upon discovering the complex mechanisms that govern the storage and use of molecular iron on our planet, decided to call this cycle "the ferrous wheel". We groaned about that for at least five solid minutes.

6.

Text - callmegallifreya The phenomenon of sneezing when exposed to sudden bright light is called an Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio Opthalmic Outburst. ACHOO. Half a byte of data is a nibble.

7.

Text - theactualcluegirl An unidentified, repetitive computer error is called a Bug, because the first one of those they discovered to be the fault of a moth fluttering against the vacuum tubes. I think we need to admit that academics and engineers are lonely, stressed people whose brains go funny places when deprived of sleep and fed too much coffee instead.

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