leaf_house

There is a cost in terms of energy required to replicate the genome. The cost is relatively small though and grows slowly within the population so it is subject to fairly weak selection. On the other hand deleting DNA is always quite a risky proposition.

Sure but you can live plenty comfortably on 100k. I don’t think we would be having this conversation if she was making that.

Comparing evolution to a random walk with selection doesn’t quite sit right with me. In practice much of evolution occurs via gene duplication and recombination. At that point you can evolve complex changes very quickly. Evolving novel phenotypes is much easier if your starting material is an existing functional gene. Many motifs can be reused and reapplied.

Comparing a mule with it’s parents shows how much novelty can be produced in a single generation (in this case an evolutionary dead-end of course)

Elementary OS, Void Linux, Deepin, Antergos and Tails are a few notable ones off the top of my head. Void has been around for a minute but has become a lot more popular recently.

This is a common logical fallacy used to justify your current lifestyle. Veganism is not about moral purity, its about the tangible impact of your actions.

Why not set yourself the challenge of only eating ethically farmed animal products? I think you’d find this ends up leading to a mostly vegan lifestyle unless you’re willing to devote considerable time and money.

Just out of curiosity, are you vegan/veg? I hear this point of view a lot online but I’ve rarely heard it within the vegan community where people are usually pretty honest about craving junk food/burgers etc every now and again. Not trying to call you out, genuinely curious.

Relatedness testing is pretty trivial with modern chip/sequencing tech so this stuff does actually tend to be pretty cut and dry. The big worry is sample swaps but those should hopefully be the exception and not the rule.