It was only in 1969 (nice) that fungi officially became its own separate kingdom.

  • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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    1 month ago

    I think an issue here is that taxonomic and colloquial definitions don’t always agree.

    Spiders are colloquially bugs, but they’re not taxonomically “true bugs” (which is itself a colloquialism for Hemiptera). Tomatos are colloquially vegetables but taxonomically fruits…but afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

    And as someone else in the thread mentioned, colloquial berries are not always taxonomic berries.

    So…colloquially, “plants” sorta means, “macroscopic multicellular living non-animal thing,” but taxonomically it’s something else.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Similarly, “a planet” can be understood in technical or colloquial context which changes the meaning. It can have a specific meaning or a vague flexible meaning, just like with berries.

      BTW raspberries are my favorite berries… sort of. Watermelons are pretty good too.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Actually planet doesn’t have any hard set definition, we kind of just do it case by case because its damn near impossible to come up with a rigid definition that doesn’t suddenly classify some planets as moons or some moons as planets or create weird situations in which an object can switch between the two.

          • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            And in that same article:

            It has been argued that the definition is problematic because it depends on the location of the body: if a Mars-sized body were discovered in the inner Oort cloud, it would not have enough mass to clear out a neighbourhood that size and meet criterion 3. The requirement for hydrostatic equilibrium (criterion 2) is also universally treated loosely as simply a requirement for roundedness; Mercury is not actually in hydrostatic equilibrium, but is explicitly included by the IAU definition as a planet

            • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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              That’s not even addressing the issue of rogue planets which were ejected from their star system. Many estimates say they outnumber the stars. Obviously when a planet is ejected it doesn’t just disintegrate but by that poor definition it’s no longer a ““planet””, so it’s clearly a problematic definition.

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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      1 month ago

      If you’re talking about tomatoes, the difference is the context, and it isn’t a choice between colloquial vs scientific taxonomy, but between culinary/nutritional vs botany/taxonomy (and). You can talk about either in a colloquial context or a formal context, though generally there isn’t much reason to talk about botany in a colloquial setting.

      From a nutritional perspective, mushrooms are generally considered vegetables, too.

      afaik vegetable is a purely colloquial term anyway.

      I thought you were wrong but I looked it up and I appear to have been mistaken. It makes “tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables” sound nonsensical, as it implies that “vegetable” is a different taxonomical option, when really it’s just a word for objects with a particular collection of traits that are relevant in a different context. What we should he saying is “While tomatoes are not fruit in the food pyramid, taxonomically, they are.” Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though. Maybe “Tomatoes are vegetables AND fruits!” would solve that?

  • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    The definition of planet is completely subjective, whereas the definition of mushroom is based on science and evolution.

    • klisurovi4@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      Some people believe the earth is flat, I don’t think whether the definition is scientific or not matters much lmao

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      Planet used to mean wandering star, referring to ‘stars’ that didn’t stay in one place but moved around with the days, months, years, or centuries. Obviously not a useful definition these days, I consider a planet a rocky body big enough that it’s gravity makes it almost perfectly round.

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    1 month ago

    I’ve met people who were certain that bugs weren’t animals

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    I overheard someone talking about veganism and said they only eat plants. I asked them about mushrooms, “of course it’s fine, those are plants”.
    No amount of convincing worked.

    So I’ve seen it once.

  • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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    1 month ago

    Pluto is a planet, though. It’s officially considered a “dwarf” planet, and as “dwarf” is just an adjective, it’s still a planet (just like a short person is still a person). The other 8 new dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna) are also all planets - so we have 17 planets total.

    Seriously, though. By the same 3 criteria that Pluto isn’t a planet, Mercury isn’t (as it isn’t in hydrostatic equilibrium).

  • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    You can use mushrooms in Plants vs Zombies.

    It isn’t called “Plants and Fungi vs Zombies.”

    Ergo, mushrooms are plants.

    Checkmate, atheists!

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      Let’s just acknowledge that anything big enough to be round is a planet. That’s the bare minimum criteria.

      Orbit shapes and clear paths don’t matter, the Solar system isn’t a typical stellar system, many aren’t so stable and ordered, especially in binary and triplet star systems. So the pedantry around the shapes of the orbits of the outer kuiper planets is a very silly thing to argue about. After all most orbits in binary and triplet systems aren’t even predictable long term, let alone not circular.

        • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
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          1 month ago

          I believe the rule of thumb is binary planets’ barycentre is external to either body. This is the case with Pluto/Charon, I think it’s also the case with Earth/Moon.

          • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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            That’s a good rule of thumb… but it’s probably not enough; no reasonable definition would call Jupiter a star, or even a brown dwarf, or the Solar System a binary system, yet the Sol - Jupiter barycentre is outside the sun… (the whole system’s barycentre is sometimes inside the sun, but that’s due to Saturn’s, Uranus’, and Neptune’s pulls cancelling Jupiter’s).

            I’d call the barycentre thing a necessary but not sufficient requirement; a proper definition of double planet should probably also take into account other factors like the relative mass and density of the bodies, and their minimum and maximum distance.