What is up with the bird at the end?
A bot strips away all spaces and letters that aren't A, T, C or G, then treats the rest like a genetic sequence and checks it against some database.
Presumably, it runs through many terabytes of data for each comment, as the Gallinula chloropus alone has about 51 billion base pairs, or some 15 GiB. The Genome Ark DB, which has sequences of two common moorhens, contains over 1 PiB. I wonder if a bored sequencing lab employee just wrote it to give their database and computing servers something to do when there is no task running.
No, I won't download the genome and check how close the "closest match" is but statistically, 93 base pairs are expected to recur every 2186 bits or once per 1040 PiB. By evaluating the function (4-1)m × mℂ93 ≥ 493 ÷ (pebi × 8), one can expect the 93-base sequence to appear at least once in a 1 PiB database if m ≥ 32 mismatches or over ⅓ are allowed. Not great.
This assumes true randomness, which is not true of naturally occuring DNA nor letters in English text, but should be in the right ballpark. Maybe fewer if you account for insertions/deletions.
The FAQ on the user's page says:
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They are not a bot, just neurodivergent
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They're using BLAST
ie, this
https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
They did not code anything beyond a very simple regex function that strips down posts to a t c g, and then they copy paste it into the above website, then copy paste the output.
Hell, you can see they aren't even removing apostrophes and quotes, not even forcing it to all lower case or all upper case, removing spaces and line breaks...
... as a former database admin/dev/analyst, I was losing my fucking mind at the notion that someone with direct access to a genomics DB, would just hook it up to tumblr, via an automated bot, and spam the db with non work related requests, all on their own, when they can barely modify a string correctly.
Thank fucking god this is just using a publicly available, no doubt extremely low fidelity, watered down search via an API.
... You need literal, state of the art, absurdly expensive, power hungry, and secure supercomputers to be able to do genomic comparisons.
Probably one of the dumbest things you could do, quickest way to get fired, and then never be able to work in the field again, would be for a random genomics lab worker who does not know how to code to open up a whole bunch of security holes and cost god knows how much money (and damage if you write bad code) running frivolous bs searches in their state of the art genomics db... for a tumblr bot.
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That's hilarious, but I needed the explanation too. Thanks!
It’s probably just ncbi
hellsitegenetics is a gimmick blog on tumblr that looks through popular posts on the website and tries to identify genetic sequences with in them and then post the creature that the genetic sequence corresponds to.
They're a bit like haiku bot, which scans posts to see if they're haikus and then formats the haiku and posts it, but i think hellsitegenetics is an actual person cuz they have talked about it in the past
Implied fact: a baby is capable of having a religion, despite its inability to comprehend the concept.
7th implication: Religion is genetic
7th implied fact: the baby's religion somehow plays a role in your deciding whether or not to hit it with a bat.
broke: i'm not gay but $20 is $20
woke: i'm not an atheist but millions of dollars is millions of dollars
Also, using babies instead of balls would make the game a lot less boring.
If it's a muslim baby it's totally OK to bat at it, of course.
Well, if a pitcher pitches a baby, the baby is likely dead regardless if it's going to make it all the way to the batter. Whether the impact with your bat or the catcher's mitt is what ultimately causes the baby to die seems to me to be an unimportant detail.
That said, since the baby is entirely unaerodynamic, it's going to move a lot more slowly than a regular baseball, meaning there's a chance you could save the baby by bunting (especially if you avoid the head), and if you assume the catcher has an ounce of humanity, they'll probably be more concerned with checking on the baby rather than tagging the runner coming from third or throwing you out at first base.
So here are the options as I see it:
- bunt
- hit it hard - nobody is going to catch a mangled baby
- refuse and take the L - irrational since the baby is a goner regardless
I'd go with 1, it's the most humane, and probably no less likely to succeed vs 2.
i like that all you needed was a hit to win but when you see the christian baby, you shift to a home run stance.
That's because the "millions" you'd win were never contingent on you winning the game. You just made an oddly-specific bet with some really fucked up sports gamblers.
What kind of Christian baby? If it's Pentecostal I'll hit it out of the park, but a New Southern Reform Anabaptist baby? No way!
I love that there is also the distinct possibility of non-Christian babies up there on the mound, with the pitcher as well.
What happens if the pitcher throws a baby of a different faith? Infield fly rule that leads to a game ending double play?
Some baseball scholars consider any contact between the bat and a Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist baby to be foul bunt, and therfore an automatic strike. A Scientologist, Church of Latter Day Saints or Jehova's Witness baby on the other hand is considered a fair ball unless caught in flight with runners on first, first and second, first and third, or bases loaded (with less than two out).
Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.
Die, heretic!
I’d smash that baby out the park. One way ticket to see Jesus.
Wait, what? You guys play baseball with christian babies too? No way! I thought we made that up in our neighborhood. Cool!!
I think even the best pitchers would struggle to throw a floppy baby 60 1/2 feet into the strike zone.
But what if you got enough break on it to get the batter to swing at a baby outside the zone?
That would be super impressive and I'd love to see it! (Hypothetically, of course)
A swaddled baby is anything but floppy.
Except maybe the head.
Easy homerun.
