If I remember correctly, cricket fields don’t have a fixed size. Also football is popular enough that people will understand what ‘x football fields’ is. But mostly we use square kilometres, hectares and so on.

Apes are Old World monkeys.

If all scientific knowledge were to suddenly disappear and we were to start from square one, it would all reappear exactly like it is.

Three competing theories of evolution arose, independently, in our world - one from British and European scientists studying the tropics, another from Russian and US scientists studying Siberia and northern North America, and a third by a Japanese scientist studying statistics and genetics. While the current consensus in evolutionary biology is that all three are true (at different timescales), the vast majority of people (and even other scientists) only know the first. This is partly because Darwin got there first, and partly because a lot of powerful people benefit from spreading social Darwinist woo.

Ironically, in a post-apocalyptic world, the powers that be would probably support the symbiotic theory, with Darwinism frowned upon as selfish individualism.

however the process of science will ensure that the truth comes to light eventually.

As Keynes said, in the long term we are all dead. Science is probably the best tool we currently have to find the truth (assuming there is a truth), but it is always important to remember that it is produced by humans, funded by interests and (mostly, though this is changing) published by for-profit journals. When reading a paper, always read the conflict of interest and funding details, and hope the authors are being honest.

But Taiwan to Polynesia is upcurrent, while South America to Polynesia is downcurrent. How would you go thousands of kilometers against the current without modern technology?

If I remember correctly, the Polynesians went there from South America, not the other way around.

Isn’t it a Rammstein song?

Indian here. Tigers are not household pets, as keeping them is illegal. Hell, keeping a body part of a dead tiger requires a permit, and is only allowed under very rare circumstances. Tigers have better protections under Indian law than humans.

Current economies are basically dependent on a growing population to support the elderly and retired members of the population.

This applies only when labour is in short supply. Japan and Germany have heavily automated their industry for this reason, and China seems to be on this track.

Apart from the labour shortage, a gradually declining population is a good thing. The earth can only give us so many resources, and unless we reduce our numbers - particularly among the rich - we are headed towards extinction.

A gradual decline in population is a good thing, so they probably don’t want to overshoot too much. Also maybe the minorities pushed for keeping some restrictions.

OP took it on the onebraincell’s phone.

This is possible, but plants with deep roots (shrubs, certain grasses and scrubs) usually take longer to grow.

The deeper problem is that it makes ‘financial sense’ to let a lot of people starve.

Pretty sure there are crops you can rotate in that replenish the soil.

Potassium is produced by breaking down potassium-rich rocks. Plants cannot replenish it like they replenish nitrogen.

There’s also a literal shitload of organic waste that humans generate that can be used for a similar purpose instead of burying it in landfills.

We do produce a lot of potassium-rich waste - sewage and food waste, for example - but most of it is also rich in other nutrients. So you can add a little of it, but adding too much of it can cause other problems (like eutrophication).

The other solution is to buy potassium fertiliser. A significant amount of this is produced in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, and I’m guessing its trade is being affected by the ongoing war.

Solar panels are capturing energy that would otherwise just heat the ground. It won’t upset the planet’s energy balance. If anything, we can use the excess to capture CO2.

The in-group vs out-group thing happens with fascism. Non-fascist authoritarianism usually does not have it.

Combined with the belief that because you are the “in group” it will not be detrimental to you, only the “out group”.

Are you confusing authoritarianism with fascism?

My computer science textbook in school called the entire tower as the CPU.

In addition to what Squizzy said, Israel has conscription, so there’s a very good chance these athletes are / were members of the IDF. So it is entirely possible that they did engage in atrocities against Palestinians.

‘Junk DNA’ is any DNA whose purpose was unknown when the article / book was written. But to return to your question, not necessarily.

First, we are usually concerned with the (dis)advantages of mutations when they occur in coding regions, which are definitely not junk DNA.

Second, just because a sequence does not encode any useful information does not mean it is useless. For example, it could be holding a coding region away from another, so both can be transcribed at the same time. Or it could be structurally important in the way the chromosome is folded.

‘Noncoding region’ seems to be the preferred term.