Well, it didn’t last long, but some wag (look up the origins of “wag,” by the way, which is a short version of “waghalter”) committed an Act of Humor on Wikipedia. As reported by SelectAll, which gives a tw**t by Buzzfeed writer Alp Ozcelik, for one brief shining moment an editor put Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, on the Wikipedia page for “Invertebrate”. Here’s what was up for a brief while, including Ryan in a table of the different groups of invertebrates and the number of species in each group:
On the off chance you don’t get it, invertebrates are animals without spines.
h/t: Barry
This is hilarious!
Hey! That’s insulting to the freshwater shrimp and snails in my new incertebrate tank!!
Your tank is certainly far more pleasant to contemplate!
A traducement of marine fauna generally.
I had a similar feeling – normally I am rather fond of invertebrates – but this is still brilliant!
Now there’s vandalism I can get behind — a throwback to the old Situationist International.
It’s amazing what some politicians will do, even seemingly principled ones, in order to gain power and advance their agenda. I don’t know how Paul Ryan looks at himself in the mirror.
Beware of those who believe the end justifies the means.
He’s definitely akin to phylum Porifera. Specifically, those without spicules.
It would have been even better if there was a picture of an elephant.
For those who don’t know, the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party. The donkey is the symbol for the Democratic Party.
I know what an invertebrate is but I’m not so sure about a Paul Ryan. I assume he’s caved in to Drumpf in some important political area?
The entire Republican party has caved in to Drumpf.
You could argue that Trump has excavated foundations in the Republican party?
!
Love it! As entertaining as the Greenpeace campaigner that brought Rubio a spine!!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/prop-comedy-is-back?utm_term=.xcbzjWkr6n#.mpBr3B102O
It’s good, but not as good as Dan Savage’s “Santorum” re-definition.
What? No Chris Christie?
Mitt Romney allegedly didn’t get the Secretary of State nomination because he refused to apologise for his campaign criticisms of Trump.
I suspect it was a petty exercise in humiliation and he was never going to be considered, regardless.
A badge of honor, IMO.
The ‘invertebrate group’ looks like one of those catch-all definitions for ‘things that don’t fit in any other category’. (I have directories like that on my PC, usually labelled ‘Miscellaneous’, ‘Misc2’, ‘Misc3’ etc, I’m not good a classifying stuff).
Spiders, corals and jellyfish make strange bedfellows, even without the addition of Paul Ryan.
cr
Further thought – G*d must have been a busy boy creating all that lot. 102,000 species of spiders – isn’t that a bit… excessive? I mean, who needs 102,000 different sorts of spiders? Surely a couple of dozen would have been enough?
And 68,000 ‘Others’ (you know you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when your species is classified as ‘other invertebrate’).
My mind is boggling slightly – who actually counted them?
cr
Nobody counted them. These are estimates of the total number of different species, based on the calculated mutation speed, variety of environments and the age of life on earth. Compared to them, we know about 10% of species in the world. Generally, the bigger the animal, the bigger % of species belonging to it’s family we know. Exceptions include some deep sea species
There is much more missing than a spine.
Should’ve included all of the GOP and bumped the numbers up by 4,500…
Others: jellyfish, echinoderms, sponges, other worms and a gallery of Republican politicians and evangelical leaders
ROFL! 😂
Actually, Paul Ryan is still a vertebrate, since his ancestors presumably had spines. It has just atrophied because it is maladaptive in his current environment.