Important If True 56: In the Shade of the Puffin

[Jake]

Important If True 56:

In the Shade of the Puffin
To learn the answers to life's biggest questions, we must evolve, change, become worse. This week: Can an artificial intelligence programmed with the mind of the Zodiac killer pierce your heart, with haunting original poems? Why does a puffin's beak glow, and why did someone care to find that out? How hard is curling, really? Will Chewbacca get hit by that rock? (Yes.) Fasten your seat belt, put on your sickest pair of mirrored sunglasses, and bask in the blinding ultraviolet rays of discovery, as we find the answers out together.

Discussed: Solo: A Star Wars Story, Chewbacca, Ron Howard, Rob Howard, fluorescent puffin beaks, sweet puffin shades, Copiale cipher, Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, Zodiac killer case-solving robot writing poetry, future human Graham who evolves to survive car crashes, Marbled Crayfish: The Crayfish That Clones, Graham's asexually-reproducing lobster children

Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Jake's Endorsement: SN30 Pro Controller to play modern video games with an SNES-like controller

Chris' Boring Endorsement: UGREEN External Hard Drive Enclosure to root through and your old hard drives and copy the important stuff to your new huge hard drive

Nick's Canadian Endorsement: The great Canadian sport of curling (see photographic evidence here)

 

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

[Problem Machine]

I think it's obvious what's about to happen. The puffin's newly revealed fluorescent beak is about to become highly sought-after by poachers, nearly driving the species extinct before natural selection kicks in and a new subspecies, born without beaks, begins to take over the planet. The age of porgs is soon to come.

[FritzTheIdiot]

[lycaon]

FUN FACT: There is actually one human that we know of (codenamed cDa29) who has functional tetrachromatic vision. There are two cone cell pigment genes on the X chromosome, therefore if you have two X chromosomes you might have some combination of genes that give you four types of cone cells instead of the usual three. However, in most folks who have four cone cells, one of the cones light frequency response is the same as one of the other three, so they can't actually see more colors than everyone else. cDa29 is special because she actually *can* see additional colors, her fourth cone has a response that peaks between normal trichromats red and green cones, therefore giving her greater color differentiation abilities. 

 

Color is way weirder than you think it is. 

[xepherys]

@lycaon - I believe there are more than one. I read some time ago about this, and there was something about only females can have tetrachromacy, and that any male children born to them are almost certain to have red-green color blindness.

 

I’ll see if I can dig up that article.

[xepherys]

More importantly, why did the show not devolve into a conversation about the obvious biological necessity for fluorescent beaks...

 

Puffin raves.

[RaggedClaws]

I think it's worth noting that scorpions also glow under UV light. I don't think they know why either.

[TychoCelchuuu]

On 4/15/2018 at 7:21 AM, FritzTheIdiot said:

Why is nobody talking about how amazing this is?

[Jake]

7 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

Why is nobody talking about how amazing this is?

It’s impossibly good. 

[aquason]

http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-finds-culinary-solution-to-combat-invading-crayfish/a-43675889

 

Quote

Berlin finds culinary solution to combat invading crayfish

The German capital has been suffering from a plague of rapidly reproducing invasive crayfish. Now, health authorities have given the all-clear for a simple solution to reduce their numbers: eating them.

 

[Ben X]

On 5/5/2018 at 8:22 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

Why is nobody talking about how amazing this is?

 

I didn't get it. Doing a google image search I see that he's Graham the car crash evolution guy. But Fritz didn't make it, right? It's an existing pic from a couple of years ago...

[TychoCelchuuu]

But it's like... amazing! I don't know what else to say. Look at his face! Look at his sunglasses!

[Ben X]

It is a very nice piece of artwork, definitely.

[Problem Machine]

Any updates on when (if???) we can expect pods to resume?

[TychoCelchuuu]

They're crunching on Half-Life 3. Once that's out the door, it'll be Cast City, USA, population Thumbs.

[tabacco]

I believe some folks are still in the process of moving.

[osmosisch]

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Volvo giev idletide pls

[Kyir]

Important If True Episode 3 confirmed

[Obscurity]

This was an interesting read, that seems to relate to Valve. I hope our intrepid podcasters keep their chins up in the capitalistic stew over there.

 

 

So, are the Thumbs now considered new Barons by this guy's description? It's all getting so Frank Herbert in here.

 

 

[brendonsmall]

 

https://www.clearwatertimes.com/trending-now/flying-squirrels-found-to-glow-pink-in-the-dark-including-two-from-b-c/