Birdsarenotreal is a ploy by big bird to make us complacent and miss the real conspiracy of avian domination.

The book. “Moment” as in a short span of time before he started fantasizing, I believe it was when Frodo was unconscious before the arrival of the orcs and the realization that he was alive, though I’m prone to misremembering. He caught himself in his folly and did great deeds, I just wanted to emphasize how immediate and potent the effect was not to downplay Frodo’s deeds and sacrifice.

Gandalf did touch it in the book, that part was the movies, though he wouldn’t take possession of it, even temporary.

Sam had the ring for just a moment before he started fantasizing about leaving to come back with an army of hobbits to take mordor by force and making it into a garden. He barely managed to give it back to Frodo who had been carrying it all this time while it slowly chipped away at his mind having to constantly remind himself to not give in to its temptations while it was punishing him for not doing so with constant torment.

But sure he was just useless, go Sam whoo!

That’s not what the article says.

There’s a bias we have that humans are the pinnacle to evolution and if evolution makes everything better over time then shouldn’t everything end up being human-like eventually?

In reality evolution just makes us adapt to the environment as it is, and to have larger energy consuming brains is not always better for survival. If it were, everything would evolve bigger brains.

Dinosaurs could have taken that step incidentally at some point in another timeline, but they were nowhere close to the traits that are necessary for maintaining a large social society.

It’s pretty much guaranteed, though there are different kinds of symbiosis I suspect you specifically mean mutualism where both creatures benefit. Small birds removes parasites from larger creatures today and there’s no reason to believe this didn’t happen prior to the extinction. The Jurassic World giganotosaurus teeth cleaning(probably inspired by this piece) is also very likely.

There’s also symbiosis like commensialism where one creature benefits and one is not affected like this beetle that lived in dinosaur nests and fed on detached dinosaur feathers.

Personally I prefer being referred to as autistic as “having autism” makes it sound like a disease to me. In my experience what autism does to me is to make me who I am. It’s a collection of traits that we have labeled autistic that is part of shaping my personality, for better and worse. Some traits are annoying to have sure, but everyone has annoying traits(to have or for others to have), mine are just incidentally put in a box and labeled.

The counterargument I’ve heard is that I shouldn’t let it control who I am, therefore it’s something I have, but that sounds silly to me because it is me. I tried all my childhood not to be weird and it only made me more insecure and unsincere. I’d rather own it than pretend it doesn’t “control me”.

It must be said though, it’s not something I care very much about and would probably not have noticed much hadn’t I been corrected by a social worker when I referred to myself as autistic and explained why it shouldn’t be used.