this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
482 points (98.0% liked)

Science Memes

15704 readers
2289 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Corn@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm Jewish and I'm upset whenever someone calls Jew Harp (an instrument) or Jew Ears (an edible mushroom) with another name.

come on, why can't we be associated with yummy mushrooms or cool cowboy instruments?

if you call it Jaw harp i want to break your jaw,

at least the Latin name for jew ear still says jew ear

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 69 points 1 week ago (2 children)

what are the changes and why?

can't post this and expect us to carry on

[–] ChexMax@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah! I'm barely able to get mad about this with no information!

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

This sort of thing happens all the time, and it's usually subject to some level of debate. Just look at the ponderosa pine (pinus ponderosa. Some say there is one species with multiple subspecies, some say they are just different varieties, some say that they are different species, or some are and some arent, etc.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Pussy willow will now be called cotton stick."

[–] XOXOX@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm Cotton Stick... Cotton Stick Galore.

[–] Crewman@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 week ago

Had it not been for Cotton Stick Joe...

[–] socsa@piefed.social 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

From henceforth "trees" shall now be called "tall wavy bois" and "flowers" shall be known as "colorful stemmy bennies."

I will not be taking questions.

[–] UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But what will the tree community be about then?

[–] binary45@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Weed. Like it’s always been.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (7 children)
[–] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The only reason Pluto is no longer a planet is because we discovered there were loads more planets and couldn't be bothered to acknowledge their existence!

[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i've spent 25 years on this blue marble fascinated by space, and only recently discovered there multiple long orbit dwarf planets going around the sun??? that is so cool why is this not widely known!

load more comments (1 replies)

It's been like that for decades to be honest. Ceres used to be called a planet, but you don't see anyone complaining about it's demotion

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Unpopular opinion: dwarf planets are cool.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

but so what?

we used to have a handful of elements, but when we kept discovering more, we didn't change the rules to have elements, and "strange elements" so schools only have to teach about 16 elements.

[–] umbraroze@slrpnk.net 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well elements are elements. All of them are just protons and neutrons and electrons at the end of the day. They have different properties but all of them behave by the same rules.

But there's some big differences between the various kinds of bodies orbiting the Sun and how they're orbiting the Sun. Big asteroids were considered planets, until we discovered there's a shitload of them and they're all in roughly the same area. When it turned out Pluto is basically in the same situation and there's a lot more of the transneptunian objects, it was pretty clear that Pluto isn't special. If you compare it to planets it's pretty weird. But I think it's good that they created the dwarf planet classification because that also elevated Ceres back, hell yeah.

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

I'd rather we have dozens of planets, with news articles talking about "new planets discovered"

we can still teach the handful of "classical planets", so we can have posters, or have like periodic tables, and everyone be aware that they might go out of date as more is discoverd.

the solar system will be more exciting and more varied.

also, the "clearing orbit from similar objects" is time and orbit dependent,

larger orbits take longer to clear, which mean in a few billion years ceres might eject pluto and become a planet?

or we could have gas giants beyond pluto (like this hypothetical 9th planet ) which it would be unlikely it has cleared its orbit, so we could have a planet larger than Jupiter which we would call a planet, but if we discover another planet in its orbit (too large to clear), then we will have to say that it is a dwarf planet.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's all just made up categorization. It's like that because astronomers have agreed to categorize them like that. That's all.

[–] llii@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pluto is a ~~planet~~ plant!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

Pluto's not a planet, but he doesn't care because he knows he's hot shit.

https://youtu.be/EuRjmzz6qL0

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (7 children)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The most performative "hurr durr science" bullshit ever. Who fucking cares if Pluto was considered a planet when you were a kid?

Not you specifically. There are people who really seem to care about this shit.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

NPC wojak: "I love science."

"Science says sex and gender are two different things."

NPC wojak gets angry: "Science was corrupted by the Jewish cabal! See: John Money*!"

* John Money is not Jewish, but is pushed by transphobes with the hope you'll accuse him being one.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Potatoes are now called potatoes

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

meanwhile,

we still refuse to call Sonic th hedgehog protein anything else.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 18 points 1 week ago

Cue in the guys about to get hanged meme. Paleontologist asking the Botanist, "First time?"

[–] fishos@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wasn't this more about taking away the names from a bunch of people who in hindsight were terrible people? I remember something awhile back about people getting upset because some groups had decided that if you had a shred of negativity in your past, you weren't allowed to discover and name things. I believe they were trying to change a bunch of names "to not honor the original person".

That didn't feel like science so much as politics and I get why some would be against that.

[–] HiddenLychee@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Have you ever been to a niche scientific community conference? It's always been 90% politics.

The Magellanic Cloud community collectively decided that they didn't want to study objects named after someone who had subjugated the ancestors of the communities studying it, so they agreed to call them the Milky Clouds. A pop science article went out about it and people complained that it wasn't science, it was politics. But unless you're a part of that community, you don't get to decide on the names of the objects that these people understand better than literally anyone else alive or dead. They're doing more science regarding these objects than anyone else has ever tried, they get to decide what's best, even if it appears political.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Science is a highly political process.

The real actual science, just ask petroleum, cigarettes, sugar, mosanto glyphosate, lysenkoism, grant allocation, DDT, lead gasoline and paint, amiante, IQ, operation paperclip, nuclear testing, SSRIs, opioid crisis, covid 19, gain-of-functionr research, psychology replication crisis, trans fats, usda food pyramid, even cold fusion and the latest entry in this list PFOA/PFAS.

Scientific truths and regulatory actions often "become allowed" only when they are no longer economically threatening to the incumbents.

load more comments (7 replies)

which plants though? are you making shit up?

load more comments
view more: next ›