SubArcticTundra

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Like, I'm aware of there being exceptions like Penguins, Ostriches, and Bats. But in general, why is there such a distinct land/air split between mammals and birds? Why don't mammals share the ground with ecosystems of plant- and meat-eating walking birds? Why didn't we get birds that evolved to slither like snakes, or tunnel like rodents? Why isn't it (land+sky) all just mammals, where we'd have parrot- and vulture-like bats that don't lay eggs? If we started the simulation again, might things like this evolve?

I've started deep diving into genetic engineering at university but I've realized just how narrow of a field it is. That if I had to move cities or had a gap between GMO jobs, I'd be just as unemployable as someone who had just turned 18. Even for tangentially related biochem professions like hygiene inspection I'm missing the requisite papers. I wanted to ask if this is something you think is worth being concerned about. Would it make sense to get qualified as eg. an electrician so that I have a way to cover the financial gaps wherever I end up, and don't have to resort to bar work?

A summary of what methods of thinking each profession requires.

I think it can be a good personal growth exercise to try out a job in one of the listed categories that you aren't naturally strong in.

Sorry for the confusing title.

I'm a student trying to establish myself in STEM.

I interned on a team doing ML for a while and when designing networks we'd encounter hyperparameters like batch size, learning rate, or number/width of layers that we'd have to eyeball the value of as we needed a sane, working value, but didn't have the time to play about with.

Then I spent a while on a team doing cellular biology. Again, we'd encounter choices like the selection of medium for cells, the length of incubation, etc. that I'd have no idea what to pick if it was up to me.

Since I'm trying to get a grip in these fields, I'd like to understand why the people I was mirroring chose these values, because to me they seemed completely arbitrary. We didn't get to alter them while completing the project so I never had the opportunity to gain an intuition for how they influence the result and why they selected the values they did.

What should I do? Should I look for the original research papers that investigated these things?

Just a bit ago Africa had fewer people than either of our continents

It's manual labour.