Telling someone to drink less beer and study more is wild.
Academics in general have a long history of being alcoholics or alcoholic adjacent
Am an academic, can confirm
I am in 1st year of college, I don’t drink, and I am failing.
Heavy drinking is considered irresponsible through your bachelor’s. After that it’s considered “networking” and “building professional relationships”. With the implicit usage as a coping mechanism
Not just in academia. This is true for corporate life. There are happy hours left and right which are as much networking as they are excuses to have someone else buy you drinks
If you’re not joking, reach out to your college’s academic support/tutoring centers. They’re literally paid to be there and help you with your classes. Even if you understand all the class content already they can still help you with whatever you’re struggling with, like figuring out how much time a project needs or how to get it started/organized.
I struggled my first go ‘round in college 20 years ago and wish I’d known that, now that I’m going back I’ve been using the support systems the college has a lot more and it’s been paying off.
Reminds me of this very old college meme (but it checks out):
Well you gotta do what you gotta do
*fewer beer XD
Akshully I think it’s either “less beer” or “fewer beers” (plural).
Now you two just had the same interaction as in the post lmao
To build on this, this usage is called a non-count noun. Less beer, less water, less air, less sand, etc. all refer to non-countable quantities of some substance. Beer could be counted, if referred to by some metric (“one glass of beer,” “24 ounces of beer”), same as “a bottle of water,” “one tank of air,” “a truckload of sand.”
Which is all to say that you’re right. “Less beer” makes far more sense than “fewer beer.”
Screw you! I drink what I want. (And can stop at any time)
Enjoy your bug light! =D
Cheers!
Username checks out?
There are three types of academics, ones that are addicted to alcohol, ones that are addicted to caffeine, and ones that are addicted to both.
(For health reasons I dont reccomend both at the same time)
… But Irish coffee, though??
Would not reccomend but you do you
I’ll never forget my proffessor that just slammed monster and chain smoked cigarettes during fieldwork.
I only saw him drink water once. It was about 115 (Fahrenheit) and he took a single sip of water from a nalgene before putting it away.
He’s gonna have a bitch of a time a few decades later passing kidneystones.
how dare you not recommend espresso martini’s
“I’m not drunk, MOM! I’m just working on my PHD!”
Yeah, that “EAT_ROADKILL” fellow is far too serious.
It’s a way to dull the senses to how retarded everyone around and especially above you is, maybe…until you need your plumbing done or the damn printer fixed 😅
Ok but “bug” has multiple meanings, and almost nobody means “hemiptera” when they say it. More commonly, it’s any terrestrial arthropod. Arachnids are bugs. Centipedes are definitely bugs.
Heck, there’s a broader definition that basically includes all arthropods. “Moreton bay bugs” are a popular food this time of year. And they’re a kind of lobster.
The ocean is quite literally lousy with sea lice. They’ve even got rolly-pollies down there.
Not just roly-polies, but Rollison J. Pollimagnussons:
What in the name of Cthulhu is this?
Here’s what they look like full-grown:
Its an adorable isopod
Delicious.
They creep me the eff out. Them and horseshoe crabs. Shudder
Rollison. And he is a rather pleasant dude.
Unhand at once me you filthy dry-skinned ape!
Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop
I make a point of referring to birds as “feather-bugs”, much to the weary resignation of my RL friends.
the birds and the bugs
i don’t actually know why it’s called “the birds and the bees” (am not american, never had it in school) but i suspect it stands for the big and little flying things?
We don’t really know where the phrase came from. My guess is that they’re things from nature that alliterate, which makes it sound cute and innocent.
Birds, mostly males, get all flashy and showy to attract a mate, and bees all answer to the matriarch of the family, so it’s just like life. Obviously.
Maybe the saying came from the mirror universe…
terrestrial arthropod
i’d like to differ
Crickets in cheeto dust taste fine…soon in a 7/11 near you 😛
You’re already eating bugs, in fact the FDA has so-called “food defect action levels”, which define the acceptable levels of food “contamination” from sources such as maggot and insect fragments among other things (best not to think too hard about it) in your daily food.
I love when someone tells me something fucked up and then tells me not to think too hard about it.
Where I live, the definition of a bug is super liberal to the point of absurdity.
But even that’s been topped a few times over the years. When I used to be active on Reddit, I would participate in the “bug” identification sub. It wasn’t frequent, but it also wasn’t all the uncommon for folks to show up asking for ID on reptiles and amphibians, even remember that a shrew (or maybe it was some other small mammal) was posted once.
It wasn’t that big of a surprise for me. I used to work retail decades ago and I remember a customer who returned a bag of salad greens because there was a bug in it. The “bug” was a very small baby frog (just out of tadpole stage) – likely some kind of tree frog.
uh, slugs are bugs! any non-vertibrate animal is a bug
uh, slugs are bugs
I’mma be honest, I would not instinctively agree with this.
I suggest “bug” applies exclusively to chitinous invertebrates.
I’m trying to square my instinct that
- snails aren’t bugs (because they’re squishy without the shell) with the feeling that
- crabs are bugs (because they’d go tap-tap if you tapped on their exoskeleton with a finger) but
- hermit crabs aren’t bugs if they’re in a shell but are bugs if they’re naked
Snail shells aren’t chitinous.
Crab shells are chitinous.
Hermit crabs are only partly chitinous, and the shells they use are not chitinous.
Hope that helps
I would. I think that just goes to show how informal and unworthy of policing the term is. We even call viruses bugs a lot of the time.
yeah, i would say “a bug is something that annoys you” so a virus could maybe be perceived as a bug as well, though i also would like to point out that “annoy” does not mean “i don’t like it”. it’s like doing sports, it can be painful but also very fun
“Bugs” even refers to errors on computers. Funny how the pedants don’t go into computer forums and berate the coders for using “bug” incorrectly.
Because it comes from a literal bug that messed with a computer.
Thomas Edison talked about bugs in electrical circuits in the 1870s.
My grandma referred to dogs as bugs (positively) and you know what, I agree
I just watched a mad scientists refer to shrimp, lobster and coconut crab as bugs for the purpose of making giant insects.
they kinda drink them actually
And they drink Bug Lite when they’re concerned about their weight.
deleted by creator
why would they drink Bug Lite when they’re concerned about their weight? i assume you mean they’re concerned that they have too little weight
He’s saying bug lite is a low calorie drink for dieting spiders
Sometimes calling someone a big dumb bitch is the only appropriate course of action.
Neither usernames check out
Rattling off insect classifications while a simple pun goes over you’re head is a great demonstration of the difference between knowledge and intelligence.
*your
Yeah, but I’m not fixing it, you big dumb bitch.
That was at least 3x funnier than it should have been.
Well done.
I’m not big.
(ノ ゜Д゜)ノ ︵ ┻━┻
(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
*yro’ue
Usernames DO NOT check out
Ignorance is bliss (oh no wait the other one riiiight that makes more sense)
“Bug” is a folksy word for any invertebrate with 6 or more legs. For example, they call lobsters and crayfish bugs.
many people call slugs, snails, and worms bugs too. So any invertibrate with the right vibes
So there is no such thing as a bug, in the same way that there is no such thing as a tree
It’s a feature
Or a fish! If there were, then people would be fish and sharks would not be.
Fish could be defined as the most recent common ancestor of tuna and herring, and all of its descendants. That would exclude sharks and lungfish, but would include most other groups that we unambiguously recognise as fish, while excluding tetrapods.
i sometimes call anything an insect that’s smaller than a small rabbit or lizard (depending on the mood of day) and has no spine. it’s colloquial use
I’ve learned recently that “Vegetable” is kind of like that too. Like most vegetables are fruits, seeds, leaves, roots, etc etc. Vegetable is a culinary term, not a botanical one, and it’s still foggy. It’s basically a plant that isn’t sweet, but they also call sweet corn a vegetable so whatever.
Not only is vegetable like that, but “fruit” is like that too. Notably, apples and strawberries are not botanical fruits, each little “seed” on the strawberry is the fruit, and the section of core around each apple seed.
The human being shares 70% of the DNA with a potato, some people many more
If a pillbug/rollypoly/potato bug/doodlebug/ <whatever your region calls it> is a bug? Then lobsters and crabs are absolutely bugs. This actually doesn’t bother me.
Lobsters and Crabs are 100% giant sea insects. Shrimp are basically giant sea gnats. They are tasty and provide nutrients. No problem there. Plenty of cultures eat land insects.
bug is typically something that stings, while insect is more generic.
Not always. Flies, ants, and mosquitoes are all considered bugs, despite having no stinging capacity to speak of.
Ants can definitely sting. Not all of them (some just spray acid or use their jaws to bite) but others have literal stingers.
ants…having no stinging capacity
But that’s like…one of the defining features that a 6-year-old could tell you about them?
Well no but yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera
Hemiptera (/hɛˈmɪptərə/; from Ancient Greek hemipterus ‘half-winged’) is an order of insects, commonly called true bugs, comprising more than 80,000 species within groups such as the cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, assassin bugs, bed bugs, and shield bugs. They range in size from 1 mm (0.04 in) to around 15 cm (6 in), and share a common arrangement of piercing-sucking mouthparts.[3] The name “true bugs” is sometimes limited to the suborder Heteroptera.[4]
But wasps can sting and they’re not bugs. They can also bite. So the key part is piercing with their mouth. For true bugs (as in the biological sense)
Whenever I hold up a bug, and say to everyone, “Look, a bug, of the true order of bugs,” everyone leaves the room because I’m doing the bug speech again
Yeah that’s because that sounds funny. You should change it to something like “look, a bug. And I say that as this is a member of the order ‘hemiptera’, also known as ‘true bugs.’”
Or perhaps it’s just your face? People listen to me quite easily.
i said typically, and colloquially. literally zero people refer to hemiptera specifically when they say bug. if you look at the american heritage dictionary, that’s the exact order used in the definitions:
#bug
/bŭg/noun
-
An insect having mouthparts used for piercing and sucking, such as an aphid, a bedbug, or a stinkbug.
-
An insect of any kind, such as a cockroach or a ladybug.
-
A small invertebrate with many legs, such as a spider or a centipede.
American
Very ethnocentric of you. I first heard it from Stephen Fry, so no, not literally zero people.
Also, it’s literally the first definition there. That’s the definition of the species in hemiptera. Just because you don’t know anyone who knows orders of animals in latin doesn’t mean we don’t exist.
I for one always enjoyed reading taxonomy, especially because sometimes translating a species can be quite weird if you don’t know the translation and have to essentially hope that the yellow-breasted warbler is the thing they also described it as in the other language. Sometimes it’s another feature.
But I’m sure you’d know roughly what I mean if I refer to the order of primates. Possibly the infraorder cetacean as well. Especially if you’ve watched Star Trek religiously.
Stephen Fry on Insects, and the beauty of nature and Evolution
That’s the wrong clip but i can’t be arsed to find it
-
Bugs of the sea
and bats
tasty sea roaches? 😬
Does “bug” have a technical definition? If so then it’s news to me and everyone who uses it to mean pretty much any small invertebrate (or microorganism, or software defect).
“bug” is a technical definition, surprisingly
Entomologists reserve the term bug for Hemiptera or Heteroptera, which does not include other arthropods or insects of other orders such as ants, bees, beetles, or butterflies. In some varieties of English, all terrestrial arthropods (including non-insect arachnids and myriapods) also fall under the colloquial understanding of bug.
Sounds like those entomologists should have tried a bit harder either in educating the masses or choosing names!
In my experience academics will often refer to hemiptera as “true bugs”, and not get too didactic about it other than that.
Not really fair to blame academics for common misuse of a term from their respective field, they’re all vastly outnumbered and people can be extremely stubborn when being corrected on terminology
Nah bugs are any little land creepy crawly, maybe an even slugs and snails.
Transcription
Three Tweets, each replying to the previous.
By “you’re right, i’m wrong” @OkBu…:
what kind of beer do spiders drink? bug lite
By “Mentally Healthy” @EAT_ROAD…:
bad joke, spiders are not bugs only insects of the order hemiptera classified as bugs and spiders aren’t even insects. maybe if you drank fewer beer and spent more time studying you would know that but it’s your life
by “you’re right, i’m wrong” @OkButStill:
they eat bugs you big dumb bitch
Good human.
If that dude drank more beer and less time studying they would have friends.
In Australia the spiders don’t eat bugs, they mostly eat low flying birds and posties
Death island*
Hard mode irl
Is it also true that the kangaroos steal all the women too with their statuesque muscles?
So you’re telling me people who drink Bud Light eat their buds? <insert lenny face>
God, what a big, dumb bitch.
Name checks out. He may have prions in his brain…
I know anti-intellectualism plays into this somewhere somehow.
… I’m just not sure where and how.
“When you argue with fools, others may not be able to tell who’s the fool.”
Aren’t spiders insects?
No. Insects have 6 legs, spiders have 8.
Are they in some separate category?
Yes, they’re arachnids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnid
Both insects and arachnids are arthropods.
They’re separate biological classes.
So they’re about as far apart as you are from a reptile, bird or fish.Not exactly. Humans, birds, and reptiles are all within the phylum chordata, while arachnids and insects are both within the phylum arthropoda.
Fish, interestingly, aren’t a real thing in terms of formal classification. The term is similar to bug in that we apply it to whichever creatures we feel fit the description.
Yeah I simplified it a bit cause I didn’t want to open a can of dinosaurs.
I don’t know if you saw Johandea’s reply to me, but it made me realize I was mistaken about what you meant.
I love opening cans of dinosaurs. :D
It’s the chicken of the past (literally)
Not exactly. Humans, birds, and reptiles are all within the phylum chordata, while arachnids and insects are both within the phylum arthropoda.
But all fish, no matter which classification you use, are also part of the phylum chordata, just like reptiles, birds and mammals. @mech@feddit.orgs statement still holds true.
It took me a bit to understand what you mean, but I get it now! I was looking at it from the perspective of them being quite similar, but they are as different, aren’t they?
Fish, interestingly, aren’t a real thing in terms of formal classification
This is misleading. Formal classification existed for a long time before phylogenetic classification became the standard.
Pluto used to be considered a planet, but I’m not going to tell people it is one today. Pisces as a class was abandoned due to the realization that we were mistaken about how similar/related they are to each other. Whales used to be included in pisces.
Pluto lost its planethood with great fanfare, to the extent that most people at least vaguely know that happened. As such, there’s not much confusion when someone refers to Pluto as a dwarf planet or the eight planets or whatever.
The planets are also something which people essentially only encounter as science. You don’t go to the supermarket and buy a planet, you can’t go and spot some in your local river or whatever. The nearest would be being able to point out Mars or Venus in the night sky.
This is unlike fish, reptiles, fruits and berries, etc. And it’s different from my personal least favourite example of this kind of pedantry: poison. Unlike venom, which is basically just a scientific term, poison and poisonous is an everyday term.
Science needs precise terms in order to do science properly. But that doesn’t mean that scientists - or more often those interested in science - need to enforce those precise terms on everybody else.
as far apart as you are from a reptile
That would mean…not very. Reptiles are an extremely broad and diverse group, containing everything from penguins and crocodiles to tuataras and pythons. Mammals are the most closely-related extant clade that is generally not considered “reptile”, to reptiles.
Arachnids, on the other hand, are more distantly related to insects. Crustaceans form their closest relatives, followed by myriapods (centipedes & millipedes). Only then do arachnids appear.
Reptiles … penguins
Hold on…
Yup. Birds are reptiles! If you want to define a monophyletic clade that includes crocodiles and lizards, there is no way to do that without also including birds. To define a clade, you take the evolutionary tree and make a “cut” somewhere on it. Everything below that cut is part of the same clade, you can’t selectively remove some branches but not others, unless it’s by changing where you make your single cut.
So in this diagram:
The green circle notwithstanding, you would usually define reptile as a cut at the “C” on the diagram. You could put the cut at Lepidosauria, but that would mean crocodiles and turtles are no longer considered reptiles either.
A more zoomed-in look would show that after crocodiles and birds branched apart, you also get another branch where pterosaurs branch away from dinosaurs, and that birds are one of many branches and subbranches of dinosaur.
I really appreciate the info and the way you laid it out. Just curious, is that knowledge part of a hobby and/or career? Or was that like just one of the random tidbits you picked up somewhere?
That’s fascinating… I knew birds had been linked to dinosaurs for a while but hadn’t given much thought to the implications… I just thought it meant dinosaurs were being reclassified as not reptiles…
Reptiles, as traditionally defined and therefore as usually meant, do not include birds or mammals. It’s a paraphyletic classification (of which there are boatloads).
Mammals, Birds and therefore non-mammal, non-bird amniotes (reptiles) are class-level classifications, as are insects and arachnids.
Sure, but we’re having this conversation in 2025, after phylogenetic classification has long since taken over as the way we describe the relations between species.
Birds are unambiguously reptiles.
Mammals are not reptiles, but are the most closely-related animals to them.
Who is “we”? It certainly isn’t most people. It’s like these interminable “no such thing as a fish” bollocks. Or “AcKsHuAlLy bananas are berries OHOHOHOHO.”
Keep that kind of jargon for your academic articles. In pop-sci contexts like here, it’s not unreasonable to use, but it deserves a health warning because of the intersection of audiences. Insisting that there’s only one correct usage is insufferable.
No, because spiders are super many, tiny, and scary, exactly like insects.
Lembot_0006 is orders of magnitudes larger than most reptiles, and is one of a kind.
I expect to lose this argument, but mom didn’t raise no quitter.
Crab
Arachnid
Arthropod?
Even when they pretend to have 6?
Or when 2 legs fall off?
No, but in a war they would side with the insects
