[rsync]

"It seems a little near in time for a literal bottleneck of seven women's genetics ..."

The bottleneck was figurative. No actual bottle was involved.

(I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle).

[o11c]

A lot of people misunderstand figurative bottlenecks too.

The "7 women" does not mean anything like "only 7 women existed at the time". Particularly:

* other women existed who only had sons, or whose daughters only had sons, etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton%E2%80%93Watson_process (about surname extinction, which is basically the same thing other than sex-specific polygamy effects)

* other tribes existed (or split off) who later faced extinction due to being outcompeted by these 7 tribes.

[arcanemachiner]

> used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true.

The word got misused so many times that Oxford modified the definition, and the wrong way is now right, by consensus.

Ah, the joys of a living language.

[gosub100]

I want a browser filter that just removes the word. It almost never adds to the content, it's just a styrofoam filler word.