General and Applied Ecology

A distinction between the pure theory of interconnected systems and its practical, dirty-hands use. General Ecology is the study of universal principles—how energy flows, how populations compete, how systems achieve stability. It's the math and physics of relationships. Applied Ecology is taking those principles and using them to solve real-world problems: restoring a damaged wetland, designing a sustainable city, managing a fishery so it doesn't collapse. It's the difference between knowing the formula for population growth (General) and actually counting the damn fish and dealing with the poachers (Applied).

General and Applied Ecology "My professor can talk for hours about the General Ecology of predator-prey dynamics. Me? I'm doing Applied Ecology, which is trying to keep the squirrels from eating every single tomato in my garden. The theory is elegant; the practice is a warzone."

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 22, 2026

General and Special Ecology

A conceptual split, borrowing language from relativity, to categorize ecological thinking. General Ecology deals with the universal laws and principles that apply to all systems—the "theory of everything" for interconnectedness, like thermodynamics or network theory. Special Ecology deals with the specific, unique rules governing particular types of systems—like the ecology of a coral reef versus the ecology of a desert versus the ecology of an online community. General Ecology gives you the grammar; Special Ecology gives you the vocabulary for a specific place. You need both to speak the language of the planet fluently.

General and Special Ecology "General Ecology says every system needs an energy source. Special Ecology says the energy source for this coral reef is the sun, filtered through symbiotic algae, and if the water warms by two degrees, the whole thing dies. General gives you the big picture; Special keeps you from killing the thing you're studying."

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 22, 2026

General Objectivity Bias

The assumption that objectivity is a single, unified thing—a muscle you can strengthen and then apply uniformly across all domains. The General Objectivist thinks that being objective about, say, sports statistics means they're automatically objective about politics, relationships, or their own motivations. They treat objectivity as a character trait rather than a painful, domain-specific discipline that requires constant relearning. This bias lets them feel like Objective People™ without doing the actual work of questioning themselves in areas where it might hurt.

"I'm an objective person—I call balls and strikes in my fantasy football league," he said, moments before explaining why his childhood trauma definitely has nothing to do with his current relationship problems. General Objectivity Bias: mistaking one skill for all skills.

by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal February 22, 2026

General Variables

Broad, encompassing factors that influence outcomes across multiple contexts and studies—the kind of variables that every researcher knows they should consider but rarely can adequately measure. General variables include things like socioeconomic status, educational attainment, cultural background, historical period, and other massive forces that shape human life so pervasively they're almost invisible. In any specific study, general variables are noise to be controlled; across studies, they're the patterns that emerge when enough data accumulates. The challenge of general variables is that they're everywhere and nowhere—they influence everything but are rarely the focus of investigation.

General Variables Example: "Every study of educational outcomes finds socioeconomic status as a general variable—it predicts everything, explains a huge amount of variance, and is almost impossible to truly control for because it shapes every aspect of a child's life."

by Dumu The Void March 12, 2026

General Law of Physical Compensation

A theoretical hypothesis proposing that the universe possesses inherent mechanisms to prevent paradoxes when the known laws of physics appear to be violated at macroscopic scales. According to this speculative principle, if faster-than-light travel became possible—seemingly violating relativity and enabling causal paradoxes—some undiscovered physical mechanism would automatically activate to prevent grandfather paradoxes from actually occurring. Similarly, if energy were not conserved in some process, or if negative entropy emerged spontaneously, the universe would compensate through some other channel to maintain overall consistency. The General Law suggests that physics is not a collection of independent rules but a self-consistent system that protects its own coherence—if you punch a hole in one law, another law quietly patches it before paradox can emerge. It's the cosmological equivalent of "the universe bats last," applied to the largest scales of reality.

Example: "The physicist speculated that if FTL travel ever became real, the General Law of Physical Compensation would ensure you could never actually kill your own grandfather—not because relativity forbids it, but because the universe has backstop mechanisms we haven't discovered yet."

by Dumu The Void March 13, 2026

General Shepherd

A character in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that killed two characters, Ghost and Roach, which are their callsigns (I think that's what you call it)

Later in the game, you play as Captain MacTavish, another character, as you're now partnered up with Captain Price.

At the very end of the game, in the mission "Endgame", MacTavish attempts to kill Shepherd but, Shepherd attempted to kill MacTavish and Price, but and the last second, MacTavish throws the knife that almost killed him, to Shepherd's face, killing him.

General Shepherd would've gotten a death sentence for high treason and many more crimes if he was taken to court.

by Communism Is Life May 11, 2025

General Chungus

Fatass pig from the minecraft movie, spends the whole time trying to kill steve, and then malgosha kills him because he asked why they wanted to kill steve

General Chungus: i'm really sorry but i have to unalive you and stuff.

by largedude July 1, 2025