Tag: evolution

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Well, that’s completely unexpected. Who could have anticipated such a thing?

“By now, it’s clear that weeds are evolving faster than companies are developing new weed killers: Just six years ago, in response to the onset of resistance to its marquee product, Roundup (active ingredient: glyphosate), Monsanto began selling a new generation of genetically modified seeds bred to resist both glyphosate and dicamba. By 2020, scientists had confirmed the existence of dicamba-resistant Palmer amaranth. The agribusiness giant took a decade to develop that product line. The weeds caught up in five years.”

Source: How Superweeds Like Palmer Amaranth Are Changing Agriculture – The New York Times

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Tips from evolutionary psychology:

The more estrangements someone has in life, the worse his or her life is – across the board

If you trespass against someone in your world, realize that forgiveness is not an easy feat and it is actually rarely truly implemented – especially if the transgression is major and personal

Developing a reputation as someone who is genuinely trustworthy within a small community is golden

Source: What’s the Darwinian Recipe for a Fulfilling Life? 14 Questions with Evolutionary Psychologist Glenn Geher (PhD)

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For years I was sure that blaze orange would be the most visible color—so sure that I bought all my shirts for bicycling in some approximation of that color. I simply couldn’t imagine that a greenish-yellow color would be more visible, especially against green backgrounds like corn and soybean fields.

Then one day while out riding in one of my orange shirts, I was passed by a pair of cyclists, one wearing just about the same color of blaze orange as I was, and the other wearing high-viz yellow.

They were riding quite a bit faster than I was, so over the course of the next few minutes they dwindled down to two small dots far ahead of me. And then they dwindled into one small dot: the high-viz yellow one. And that high-viz yellow shirt remained visible for a really long time after the orange-shirted guy riding right next to him had vanished in the distance.

After I thought about it, it made sense. Humans evolved as forest-edge creatures. Of course high-viz yellow stands out, even against a hundred different shades of leafy green. Picking critical detail out of dappled shade—where basically everything is a shade of yellow-green—is exactly what the human eye evolved to do.

All my new safety gear is high-viz yellow.