this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
972 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

20690 readers
2016 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Meta Post Tags



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"

Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.

Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.

We moderate for vibe, not category. Pruning is light, especially where a post creates interesting discussion. Experimenting is encouraged.

See the pinned paper on Shitposting as Public Pedagogy if you want the academic case for why this works.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] raptir@mander.xyz 267 points 1 month ago (16 children)

Kids these days don't even know about the hole in the ozone later.

[–] its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 222 points 1 month ago (5 children)

It's kinda our last big environmental win.

[–] Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 128 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

There's been some conservation wins that I know of. Okaloosa Darter fish came off of endangered status, and eventually off of threatened The Red Cockaded Woodpecker was elevated from endangered to threatened a few years ago.

Controlled burns in the US long leaf pine forests have also lead to a return of the quail population.

Just trying to sprinkle a little good news out there.

[–] Texas_Hangover@lemmy.radio 54 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Cockaded Woodpecker

Now your just making shit up.

[–] Signtist@bookwyr.me 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Winner of the "most penis euphemisms in one name" award.

Top contenders:

Red-cockaded Woodpecker — "cockaded" refers to a ribbon or rosette ornament once worn on hats, not anatomy.

Cock-of-the-rock — sounds like a tavern name invented by a teenager.

Dickcissel — often cited as the funniest North American bird name. "Dick" was historically a common nickname for a male bird.

Bush Thick-knee — not penis-related, but frequently gets laughs.

Rufous-naped Lark — harmless, but "rufous-naped" is often misread at a glance. Shag — in British English, perfectly normal; elsewhere, not so much.

Cockatoo — contains "cock," though the name comes from Malay, not English.

Woodcock — another classic.

Black-cockatoo and other cockatoos — bonus points for stacking "cock" into longer names.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

American Bison, too. The repopulation of American bison (often mistakenly called buffalo) is one of the most successful repopulation efforts in history. The reason you’re able to order buffalo (again, not actually buffalo) burgers at your local hipster burger joint is because American bison is no longer endangered. The population has come from less than 1000 total bison (all privately owned by a handful of conservationists) to over 400k today.

[–] its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 month ago

I had a Bison meatloaf once that was so good. It's so much lighter than beef. It was like eating a meat cloud.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

I saw on Ted Turner's wiki page that he helped with that.

[–] ruuster13@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The irony of all ironies is how similar the words "conservation" and "conservative" are.

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That's because the root of both is to conserve. To keep things the way they are.

Politics gets in the way of that reality since they don't actively want to keep it the same, they actually want to regress back to previous times they can exploit personally.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] DeadDigger@lemmy.zip 41 points 1 month ago

The thing is it kinda isn't. The ozone layer still needs about 20 years to get back to 1960 levels and the number of problematic states for this increasing again

[–] MonkRome@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

iirc ~1/4 of the worlds energy production is renewable. More than 90% of all new electricity capacity worldwide came from renewable sources in 2024. Doomers want you to believe it can't happen again while we are in the very decade that is likely to change the world. Public policy doesn't even matter at this point, renewable energy is cheaper, so nearly all new investments are in renewables.

[–] Ophrys@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Energy sources are only part of the issue (albeit a major one) and enormous damage has already been done to a disastrous point, calling people "doomers" with an intent to ridicule their angst, worries and experiences is akin to climate change denial.

Also, public policy is constantly used in an expensive way if that it suits the ruling classes, markets are not some neutral forces in a vacuum.

[–] MonkRome@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

I'm concerned about climate change. But if you ask most people how much progress we've made they would say "barely any". That belief that we can't do it, is the main thing aside from public policy slowing us down. When people think things are hopeless, they often don't see the point in fighting or changing their behavior. I also think most people don't realize that renewable energy adoption has accelerated so quickly the last few years. Every year we have had massive growth over last year in adoption.

[–] Jako302@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's only the case because it was the cheapest option available for a while. Oil execs noticed the trend and got cold feet, now a lot of governments are cutting back subsidies for renewables and actively hinder new projects being build. Here in germany we have investors abandoning half build solar parks cause they aren't profitable anymore. At the same time we allow oil companies to bid for gigantic offshore projects just so they can say that they have no interest in actually building it after they won.

With the ozon hole you could see the world working together to fix it despite it beeing somewhat less profitable. With renewables you can see governments actively working against the movement despite it being the best in terms of environment and profits combined.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

We could stop producing all greenhouse gases today, and the planet would continue warming for 100 years. it's a pretty tough problem we have on our hands.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 17 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Tbf, its not even yet a win technically.

TCO is expected to return to 1980 values around 2066 in the Antarctic, around 2045 in the Arctic, and around 2040 for the near-global average (60°N-60°S). - Source

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So is that good news, that we’re moving in the right direction?

Though the very next sentence from that linked source says

The assessment of the depletion of TCO in regions around the globe from 1980-1996 remains essentially unchanged since the 2018 Assessment.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 4 points 1 month ago

2018 to 2022 didnt see much change (and given how far until its fully returned to normal, I think you can see qhy - it takes a long time to fully heal), but we're certainly pretty far into success compared to where we were.

load more comments (2 replies)

Yeah, last. Not latest, last.

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 73 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I just told my kid about how we fixed acid rain through regulation just this morning

[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Well it's understandable, the concept of being able to actually cooperate and do something about the environment on a world scale instead of just blindly pretending it's not a thing until it kills us all is a bit hard to believe for younger generations for obvious reasons.

[–] ironycanal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I don't understand, why would it sound implausible? Isn't that what governments are FOR?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Not when all governments have been captured by oil tycoons it isn't.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's what governments are supposed to be for.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

We managed to dial things back a bit, so that became a smaller problem.

We used to see regular news reports of actual rivers on fire. Things are still way too bad, but we forcefully throttled some things as we saw how quickly the damage was compounding.

Women’s hair doesn’t defy gravity without lots of help.

[–] Obi@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 month ago

Oh my god I needed your comment for it to finally click, I was thinking "they stopped putting their hair up to protect their shoulders from the increased UVs"? But of course, it was referencing the sprays!

And there was that whole thing about trying to make cars burn a little cleaner so you could actually see from 1 side of a major city to another

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago

Trump wants to bring it back.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ozone later

Well that's because we're at now, not at later.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We've had one ozone yes, but what about later ozone?

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] Triumph@fedia.io 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

[gets hit on head by aerosol can.]

[–] BurgerBaron@quokk.au 15 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Well not to worry, all these internet swarm satellites might cause another one.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Flyberius@hexbear.net 9 points 1 month ago

Oh don't worry, it's coming back

[–] Eternal192@anarchist.nexus 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Most don't know that we have an ozone layer let alone that there is a hole in it.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

One of my coworkers insists that the hole in the ozone layer is an iris that expands and contracts for regulation. When I asked him what it was regulating, he just shrugged and gave a look that said "I don't know, you tell me"

He also claimed that believing that humans were capable of changing the global climate was pure hubris, despite the USSR deleting the Caspian sea decades ago.

And he thinks the wind turbines that have been installed in the past 10 years are making tornadoes worse, contradicting his claims that humans can't change the climate

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think your coworker may be a lost cause, do you think you could convince him that anti-freeze and turpentine will make him see god?

[–] psud@aussie.zone 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Engineering a death by misadventure doesn't seem ethical to me

Just wait for the people he follows on the internet to tell him

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 8 points 1 month ago

in a situation in which harm increase over time, like the rise of far right, anti-science, environmental damage, etc… perhaps that “wait” is a less ethical solution than to solve the problem

now, perhaps causing harm isn’t the way to go, but… the lesser of 2 evils may still be somewhat problematic

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

in australia they absolutely do

we take skin cancer very seriously down here

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)