“hiraeth”—(hɨraɪ̯θ), noun | A Welsh, untranslatable feeling, hiraeth is loosely described as a homesickness for a home you cannot return to anymore or a place, which never even existed. Connotations of sadness, yearning, profound nostalgia, and wistfulness are imbued into the state of hiraeth. Overall this beautiful, but painful longing is a an expression of an empty desire and grief over a past life or place. It is the ultimate signifier of a bond, which has ceased to exist. (via 16pc)
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
So, I have to say something.
This is my favorite post on this website.
I’ve seen this post in screenshots before, and the first time I read it, I cried. Just sat there with tears running down my face.
Because this, right here, is the best of us, we humans. That we hope, and dream of the stars, and we don’t want to be alone. That this is the best of our technology, not Terminators and Skynet, but our friends, our companions, our legacy. Our message to the stars.
I’m flat out delighted, and maybe even a little honored, that I get to reblog this.
So, today, Marvel published issues of comics revealing that in fact the Nazis were always supposed to win World War 2, and the Allies invented the Cosmic Cube to rewrite history to prevent that from happening.
That was released today. April 19th.
The anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt during World War 2, the first urban uprising in Nazi-occupied Europe, begun when the Nazis decided to completely wipe out the Warsaw Jews on Passover eve. Instead, the Jews held out for nearly a month, with whatever they could fight with. They’re honored to this day.
And Marvel published their Nazi-stanning dumpster fire of a retcon today.
so how many people on Marvel’s editorial board are white supremacists?
Fucking ridiculous
But no, the reason we all bailed was too much “diversity.”
There’s something more insidious going on here than just “the Nazis were supposed to win” and I think it needs examination.
And by that I mean let’s talk about Steve Rogers, Straight White Cis Man.
A lot of the early superheroes were very explicitly invested in social justice - Wonder Woman fights sexist dictators and empowers women, Superman goes undercover to bust the KKK and advocates for the working class. And of course it’s not that surprising that Superman, the explicitly Jewish-coded immigrant, or Wonder Woman, the female superhero in a world of men, strike out against the power structures that oppress the groups they represent; they stand to gain greatly, after all, from the freedom and elevation of their peers.
But Cap is a little different. Cap, actually, is a lot different, because Steve Rogers is a white man with blue eyes and blonde hair. Steve Rogers is not just physically fit and able-bodied, but an outright ubermensch who can tough out gunshot wounds and knock around cars. Steve Rogers would be treated like a goddamn king in Hitler’s Germany, he is literally everything they claim to love and want and honor. Steve does not stand to gain greatly by fighting Nazis. Steve stands to gain greatly by joining them. The only thing he, personally, can achieve by his battle is personal loss; at best, of institutional privilege over basically everyone he’ll ever meet, at worst, of his very life.
If you think it is an accident that two Jewish guys made this character the dedicated, justice-loving ultimate enemy of the Nazi state, I do not know what to tell you other than that you are hilariously, incomprehensibly, obviously wrong.
This is a guy who could have the bad guys eating out of his hand, but opposes them instead because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. No matter the cost, no matter what anyone else says he in particular should care about due to his own station, he’s going to help people instead of hurting them. Steve Rogers is not just a guy who punches Nazis, he is a promise to Jewish kids that Gentiles, too, can and will punch Nazis, and a reminder to Gentiles that just because they’re not Jewish is no excuse not to. More than that, even. He is a promise to every marginalized fan that yes, there really are allies who will fight for you all the way to the end. He is an example to every privileged fan that real heroism means being that ally for others, that it is not only possible but important and even imperative to defend the less privileged. If Diana teaches us that we can fight for ourselves, Steve teaches us that we can fight for others. And that is a kind of hope and inspiration that most superheroes never even get to pretend to.
And so think about what Spencer is saying, when he says that that isn’t real.
In Spencer’s new Cap universe, it is natural, inevitable, that a smart, strong, authoritative white dude would ally himself with Nazis. In Spencer’s universe, if you want a person with privilege on your side, if you want that person to actually put themselves at risk fighting on your behalf, you have to literally rewrite reality. Are you a person with privilege? Great, don’t worry about it, you have no obligation to give a shit, because no sketchy minority rabble-rouser has brainwashed you with a cosmic cube. Are you a minority rabble-rouser? You’re on your own, good fucking luck. Straight white cis dudes are your natural enemy, and since you live in the real world without cosmic cubes, there’s nothing you can do about it.
Spencer has taken a character created by two Jewish guys to explicitly say “you don’t have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people” and turned him into a character that instead very aggressively says “actually you do have to be Jewish to care about Jewish people. Race war is the Real World and that Steve is a fantasy.”
So, you know. Fuck him.
I wish that I’d been able to put this into words half as well as @bluefall-returns did.
I can’t believe that the two greatest party songs of all time (I Gotta Feeling and Party Rock Anthem) came out within two years of each other and mankind will never create a better party song
Some people have been defending various other party songs in the notes, and while I respect all of your opinions, the only song that can qualify as a POTENTIAL exception is Tik Tok by Ke$ha
What about Allstar, great for every occasion
All Star is, in my opinion, the Greatest Song of All Time™ and while it great for every occasion, the three above are the best suited for parties. Like rich chocolate is good for every dessert, but milk goes better with Oreos than more chocolate, ya know?
I was not ready for such an educated response but completely agree
This really isn’t a terribly interesting story, but it is something for the annals of human stupidity. I can’t remember the exact details, and I really don’t care to do an exhaustive search the Internet, but I’ll sketch it out for you as I recall having read about it some years ago.
In 1474, in Switzerland, a hen that was thought to be a cock, laid an egg. Nowadays this wouldn’t even cause concern, as it is known that certain female chickens exhibit masculine traits and even grow coxcombs. But in those days, if it looked like a cock, it was a cock, and when this intersexed chicken laid a yolkless egg, it was seen as a sign that some witch in the village was attempting to create a basilisk. A basilisk is supposedly made with a yolkless egg from a male chicken. This was of course the Devil’s work, and so the chicken was put on trial for witchcraft and the heinous crime of laying an egg.
The chicken’s attorney argued that while this may have in fact been a demonic act, it was involuntary and the chicken could no more help laying the accursed egg than any possessed person could help their actions while under the Devil’s sway.
The chicken was found guilty and burned at the stake.
The sad thing is they probably didn’t bother to baste him. Probably didn’t even eat him. What a waste.
This is the WEIRDEST and most entertaining story I’ve read all month.
The title made me rofl
It’s all true.
Okay but. The most important part of this entire story is that the chicken had legal representation. Why? Was it a legality? Was someone obligated by law to represent the chicken? or did someone just feel that strongly about its innocence?
Yes, precisely. The attorneys of the day were just beginning to work through the philosophical theories of the juxtaposition of a religious state with necessary fairness and unbiased doctrine of law. This was at a crucial point in history, a kind of nexus between the feudal and the renaissance. These types of events were somewhat commonplace.
Ideal time-travel destination: The Chicken Trial
For the defense, this was basically free practice, and if they lost the case, it wasn’t like they had lost street cred, or had to deal with the next of kin.
Indeed. It was an intellectual exercise, but it was also more than that, because it was the beginning of the notion of equal and adequate representation. Lynch mobs and backward assize courts were nothing new. Barons and lords presided over matters on a constant basis without any presumption of fair treatment or ethical judgement. No representation was given, nor guaranteed. Moments like this were the strange psychotic delusions that mandated some sort of rationality. You’ve put a chicken…a non-speaking animal, on trial. For a crime that biblical texts tell us is only possible with intent, and as the Bible indicated according to the doctrine of the time, was incapable of having such intent. So there was a moment there of absolute insanity that was reined in.
“That chicken is a witch! Put it on trial!” “But a chicken is an animal. It can’t be a witch.” “Well………it’s being used by a witch!” “But how would a witch use a chicken, and how do we get an animal to testify which witch is manipulating it?” “Well………..give it an attorney who can make that argument.”
And from there on out, the precedent was set that all people brought before the law were entitled to representation.
Now, that is not to say that became common practice, nor that all such individuals obtained even a passing assistance from their representation, but when documents, laws and documents regarding the rights of citizens began to be adopted, moments like this became pivotal.
“You mean to say you would let a chicken have an attorney, but not a man accused of petty theft? What sense does that make?”
To the point that, James I, who had himself written a book about how to find and prove a witch “forensically”, actually used common sense to show that a person was not a witch, himself acting on the witch’s behalf.
So such things were an integral part of modern western legal principles…
There is a word meaning “the tendency of nature to try to evolve a crab.” Someone noticed that a bunch of unrelated species independently arrived at “crab” as their destination, so clearly that is such a fabulous structural design that nature just occasionally looks at Thing With Shell and goes “ehhhhh fuck it, let’s make another crab.” And that person decided that there needed to be a word for this very specific thing. And thus: carcinisation.
If you add two pounds of sugar to literally one ton of concrete it will ruin the concrete and make it unable to set properly which is good to know if you wanna resist something being built, French anarchists used this to resist prison construction in the 80s
I’m just gonna go ahead and reblog this for purely educational purposes.
added bonus is that concrete now taste good
Sugar does not really do that.
What you need is citric acid (you get that to get the hard water residues out of your pots/water boiler/washing machine), looks like sugar granules.
Or concentrated vinegar.
Cement needs a high ph to bind properly. So if you add acid, it won’t properly set and/or needs 3-4 times longer.
Speaking as someone who works in the concrete forming industry: the easiest way to severely fuck up any large concrete pour is to delay it at the wrong moment.
If someone is trying to build a huge fuckoff concrete thing - say, for instance, a giant wall - they’re going to need an obscene quantity of concrete, and that’s all going to have to be transported there from the nearest mixing plant. This means they’ll have multiple trucks coming by to decant concrete in consecutive pours while the workers place it and vibrate it to ensure it all intermixes and sets properly, forming a monolithic mass. If one pour is allowed to set before the next one is added, you get a big, ugly, possibly structurally unsound gap between the two called a “cold joint.” A bad enough cold joint can completely fuck your whole project because the next engineer or inspector who sets foot on that site is going to take one look at that motherfucker and immediately embark on a quest for blood vengeance. You will literally have to cut that whole section of wall out, slap some dowels in the nearest structurally sound bits, and re-form and pour the offending segment from scratch, which represents a fortune in cost overruns and will make everyone involved very upset. This is an especially bad problem in hot climates, because the concrete curing process is exothermic - that stuff sets much faster when it’s really hot out, and its 28-day compressive strength tends to be poorer as well.
So if, hypothetically speaking, you wanted to completely shit up a wannabe dictator’s enormous unfeasible poured concrete vanity project, you could literally just randomly hassle and delay every concrete truck on its way there. Dude’s gonna end up with a giant worthless pile of shitty crumbling concrete and exposed reinforcing steel, and an army of pissed-off contractors to boot.
reblogging for purely educational purposes nothing more
Every time I hate my body I remember that there are millions of old rich white men who benefit from my self hatred and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s old rich white men so I snap out of that shit instantly cos I ain’t EVER giving them the satisfaction.
Oh my fucKING GOD
Wait stop this is a game changer.
i have reblogged this 4 times; i have thought about this every fucking day
Reminder!
“If every woman in the world woke up tomorrow and decided that she loved herself and loved her body just the way it is, how many industries would go out of business?”
IMPORTANT
Hey look a few more industries for us millennials to kill!
People need to realize that there’s a difference between straight people and Straight People™
Straight person: Hey, you got a new haircut. Looks really good.
Straight Person™: No homo, but your haircut looks good on you.
In case you were confused 👌
Just like how there are white people who are gay and then there are the White Gays
White people who are gay: “I’m gay.”
White Gays: “I can’t believe I got accused of racism after calling that person a racial slur! I mean, I know what racism looks like because I’ve been discriminated for my sexuality. How is me being racist even possible? I’M GAY!”
Lmao all the angry White and Straight people in the comments, keep reblogging
neurotypical: i don’t have any mental illnesses or disorders Neurotypical™: Happiness is a choice!! ✨✨Have you tried yoga? Drink more water and eat kale ✨✨
cis person: i identify completely as my assigned gender
Cis Person™: It doesn’t matter what you identify as, cause you still have Female Genitals! I’m not being offensive!! Read a book on Human Biology! 🚹🚺
men: I identify as male.
Men™: feminazis ruin everything, get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich bitch
atheists: I don’t believe in god or identify with a religion
Atheists™: Don’t fucking talk to me if you believe in God. Open your closed-fucking-minds!! (usually targeted towards Christians)
nice guys: hey I know when not to invade someone’s space and I totally respect boundaries
Nice Guys™: IVE BEEN YOUR FRIEND FOR A MONTH AND NOW YOURE TELLING ME YOU DONT WANT TO FUCK ME ???? WHAT IS THE POINT OF WOMEN IF YOURE NOT HAVING SEX WITH ME?
this post got all kinds of better since I last saw it
This post is perfection across the board.
feminist: I believe in equality for everything between the sexes
Feminist™: ALL MEN ARE ASSHOLES AND SHOULD DIE! WE DONT NEED ANY OF THEM ANYWAYS AND THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING GOOD FOR US!!
Christian: I believe in God and his son Jesus
Christian™: We must Obey Bible In Everything and Take It Literally and if you don’t do it you’re Going To Hell! I’m praying for you to find God and have your sins Forgiven! Other religions are from Satan and So Is Atheism!
Hey, if you’re sick of nazis on your Tumblr but you keep on having to block new ones, Tumblr’s most recent experimental feature can probably really help you out. It’s called Reblog Graphs and you can test it here.
Basically, what it does is show you a network of how your post was reblogged and who were big influencers in getting lots of reblogs. That’s useful in general but extra usefull if you want to know who to block to get rid of shit on your dash.
For example, this post that I wrote got a lot of notes and when I use Reblog Graphs is generates this graph:
I’m the yellow dot and all the other dots are reblogs, the bigger the dot, the most reblogs originated from that reblog. Next, I can click on the dots and see who they are and what content they added. For example:
When @thatdiabolicalfeminist reblogged my post the result was a lot of supportive reblogs, helpful feedback and conversations that I want to have.
But check out the other cluster:
When wogbeginatcalais reblogged my post the result was a stream of hateful comments by white supremacist, nazi blogs and nazi trolls. Not stuff I want and one reblog started all of it.
I had blocked a lot of white supremacist blogs when the hate started, but according to Reblog Graph I missed out on quite a lot of the most important blogs that were causing my post to be noticed by these shits in the first place. By blocking key nazi dots in this chain, I can now more effectively stop nazi shits from finding my posts. Good to know!
Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster.
Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.
I said many ignorant people nowadays thought ‘Frankenstein’ was the name of the monster, and not of the scientist who created him. Mary Shelley said, ‘That’s not so ignorant after all. There are two monsters in my story, not one. And one of them, the scientist, is indeed named Frankenstein.’
(Kurt Vonnegut)
It makes you want to give Mary Shelley a high five. I’m glad she knew how brilliant she was all along.
On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions of Gonzo the Great: Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it.
But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?
Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.
Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.
Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.
If you must anger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.
This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.
Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.
Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.
We knew about the planet called Earth for centuries before we made contact with its indigenous species, of course. We spent decades studying them from afar.
The first researchers had to fight for years to even get a grant, of course. They kept getting laughed out of the halls. A T-Class Death World that had not only produced sapient life, but a Stage Two civilization? It was a joke, obviously. It had to be a joke.
And then it wasn’t. And we all stopped laughing.Instead, we got very, very nervous.
That autism/ADHD feel where intellectually you KNOW something is important, but it’s just not interesting to you so for the life of you you cannot care or concentrate on it.
So if we extrapolate from this one-off line in episode fifteen, as well as this tweet by the creator and the answers given at this comic con panel from 2014, we can infer that this character’s relationship with salad is more complex than it first appears …
*pulls down sunglasses and points a flamethrower at the source material* Death of the author, baby.
“In the unlikely event that you encounter something that is not covered here, find a man named Erik Lehnsherr, get his advice, and then do the opposite.”—Charles Xavier (via incorrectx-menquotes)
Ever since the last Jedi trailer came out, I’ve been trying to think of Deep Good Meta to contribute to the Star Wars fandom but literally all I’ve got is:
Rey standing out in the rain. Luke asks her what she’s thinking. Rey closes her eyes. “I am going to have sex with my boyfriend in the rain,” she announces.
“Oh,” says Luke, who was maybe expecting something about feeling the flow of the Force, but he’s adaptable. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“I’m going to go ask Finn to be my boyfriend and then we are going to have sex in the rain.”
Luke nods. “A sound plan.”
Personality wise, Rey has perhaps one of the firmest chins he has ever seen, second only to his sister which is a thought Luke promptly pivots away with a Jedi master’s aptitude for resolutely not thinking about things and calling it meditation.
Rey raises her firm chin yet higher. “We’re going to do all the sex things in the rain.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Luke says with complete honesty. He’s happy for Finn as well, if a little concerned he should give the boy a head’s up. Rey grins at him. Luke doesn’t grin back but mostly because he’s still trying to be stern as a teaching technique so he doesn’t get attached.
He’s aware, by the way, that he’s failing.
Pushing that thought aside (he’s very good at that these days–it’s a very quiet island, it doesn’t offer much options for hobbies besides ignoring thoughts and brooding on them and occasionally fishing), Luke asks, “You do know what you need to know?”
“What, like how to do it?” Rey asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Of course. Sort of. I’ve done it before, loads of times.” There’s a very thoughtful pause. “There weren’t many humans in Jakku,” she says, a little worry slipping into her voice. She furrows her brow. “But I figure humans, you know, other humans–it’s basically the same but with only the four limbs. Less slime. And no scales?” Luke gets the impression she didn’t mean that last part to be a question.
And because she’s a student, a young student, his only young student and fellow human on this island whose population has suddenly skyrocketed to four, he does not say what he’d say to a friend and peer, which is, “honey you can’t make assumptions like that, you would not BELIEVE what people with dicks have done to modify them.” Instead, because he’s a mature teacher who is frantically relearning how to be that to the hungriest student he has ever met, Luke says, “I can’t vouch for Finn’s situation. But I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.” After Luke discreetly passes her a few anatomical drawings, just to be on the safe side.
people who complain about dinosaurs “not being scary anymore” because its been discovered they have feathers and are closely related to/ancestors of birds are so bizarre like
its not about how scary they are, they are/were real life animals and what matters is learning more about them, not how well they fit into your science fiction horror film lol
can you imagine a 13 foot chicken running at you with full intent to eat you??? thats fucking terrifying holy shit
peacocks are synonymous with vain, frivolous beauty and they will attack cars. they will attack you while you try to get to your car. they’re like six feet of useless feathers and they will destroy you. imagine if they were carnivorous and had functional spurs.
a t-rex could look like a gay disco ball and i guarantee that you would fucking book it if it had a problem with you
listen
listen
have you ever met a swan
if anything the birdier they get the scarier they are
Australia literally fought a war against giant birds AND FUCKING LOST
“Oh man, I can’t deal with birds ‘cause they’re dinosaurs and sometimes it’s like they get this glint in their eyes and they remember.”
“Have you ever interacted with a goose? ‘Cause those things are dicks.”
If chickens were still the size of a T-Rex we’d all be dead. No question.
Feathered creatures that give some serious lie to the idea that feathered dinosaurs ain’t scary:
This is a bearded vulture, or lammergeier. It’s four feet long and has a nine foot wingspan and it eats bones.
This is a shoebill stork. It dropped the duck without biting down shortly after the picture was taken, but if it had decided not to-
… it could have been the end of the road for that duck.
This is the last thing a fish sees before a macaroni penguin eats it.
This is a secretary bird in the act of demonstrating to Lord Voldemort that he came to the wrong neighborhood, ese.
This is a goose.
This is a vulture.
This is a cassowary on the attack.
Be glad I couldn’t find the actual gif of a pelican swallowing a fish, because it’s freakin’ Lovecraftian in its HEADS SHOULD NOT BEND THAT WAY factor. You’ll have to settle for the idea of a feathered dinosaur suddenly going GLORP and devouring its victims whole just like this lady here.
Steven Spielberg didn’t create these. These are the feet of an emu.
And this is what happens when a swan (this one is named Asboy; his father was Mr. Asbo, the first swan in the UK to get named after an anti-social behavior order in ‘honor’ of his tendency to attack boaters) decides it doesn’t like you. I should probably note that this one attacked a cow.
Respect the feathered dinosaur, yo.
Terrifying. The last two illustrate why you did not fuck around with the Children of Lir.
I suspected that a dinosaur could have been feathered after I heard that a T-Rex is the chickens’ ancestor.
For those who think dinos aren’t cool because they’re feathered…whatever, mutherfuckers. Evolution doesn’t give two shits what you think is cool or not.
You showed a cassowary on the attack, but forgot to show what exactly it’s attacking with. Their feet are nearly identical to the Emu’s, except for one minor, teeny tiny detail: A five-inch claw for killing motherfuckers, raptor-style.
This is like the “fuck birds master post” and I love it because Honestly, Fuck. Birds.
Just a note :
T. rex is not in any way a direct ancestor of chickens. They’re both nested under Coelurosauria and Theropoda, but that’s it. Chickens are closer related to things like oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurids, and alvarezsaurids (Well,all birds in general are).
But anyway, to add on to this post :
This is Aquila audax, aka the Australian Wede-Tailed Eagle. It’s one of the largest Eagles in the world alongside the Golden Eagle and Philippine Eagles with a wingspan of over 2.8 meters.
You seem, the Australian Wedge-Tailed Eagle ain’t your typical, run-of the mill bird of prey, Oh no.
This son of a bitch is metal as fuck
The diet of the American Bald Eagle consists mainly of fish. The Golden Eagle and Harpy Eagle will generally attack mostly small mammals, as with other eagles.
The Australian Wedge-Tailed Eagle?
This fucker will attack and prey on animals as large as Emus, bandicoots, small sheep, fucking Koalas, Frill-necked lizards, FUCKING FERAL CATS, FOXES, WALLABIES, GOATS, AND KANGAROOS.
So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
‘But surely you have records of volcanic activity doing tremendous damage to human settlements.’
‘Yep. Pompeii is legendary. Entire cities went. Towns buried under lava, peoples’ brains boiled in the first rush of heat, loads more killed by falling pumice.’
‘ah, good, they learned their lesson and didn’t build there again.’
‘…well…’
‘Are you seriously telling me this volcano is legendary for killing several urban conurbations and you built on top of it AGAIN?’
‘In our defence it hasn’t actually done it since.’
‘What about earthquake-prone areas? Tell me you’re at least vaguely sensible about those.’
‘Oh yeah. After the first major earthquake that flattens a city, we build them better.’
I live on both Earth Australia and Sace Australia.
alien: people died of the cold and your solution was tosend more people
human:
Aliens and monsters fascinated by humans will never stop being a thing for me
These are my favorite posts.
Alien - Ok, so tell me about war.
Human - Ok - lists everything from the 300 Spartans to possible WW3 -
Alien - So who are these people fighting in a square and a caged circle?
Human - Those are sports fighters.
Alien - You fight each other for fun?
Human - Yes.
Alien - WHEN YOU HAVE ALL THESE WARS!? THAT WOULD EXPLAIN IT!
Human - Well there’s the geneva convention. - explains what it is -
Alien - YOU BANNED WEAPONS OF WAR BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO EFFECTIVE!?
Human - It’s like cheating.
Alien - AT WAR!?!? WHERE YOU ACTIVE GOAL IS TO KILL EACH OTHER!? YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT CHEATING!?
Human -…………………..
Alien - What?
Human - Nothing.
Alien - No, what? There’s something else isn’t there?
Human - Nukes are not technically banned under the convention.
Human: All this celebration needs is some booze
Alien: some what now?
Human: Booze. Alcoholic drinks.
Alien: What is alcohol?
Human: Ethanol.
C2H6O
Alien: wait, isn’t that the stuff your people use as disinfectant?
Human: yup.
Alien: and a fuel additive?
Human: yup.
Alien: Isn’t that a poison!?
Human: well yeah, but it’s watered down when we drink it.
Alien: !?
THIS IS MY FAVORITE SHIT
So what about the fact that humans can take so much abuse to the body and miraculously survive
Alien: So let me just review: You have records of people surviving fatal wounds commonly…
Human: Uh-huh.
Alien: And some of these stories include stab wounds to the brain…
Human: Oh, yeah, all the time.
Alien:….and then…surviving and even improving from crippling injuries or brain damage…
Human: Those are some of the truly strong ones, that.
Alien: Yes…indeed…………………………………………………
Human: What? What is it?
Alien: It’s just…..well………we had heard….rumors….
Human: Of?
Alien: It’s nothing. They’re false, they must be! Humans coming back from the dead–it’s funny really!
Human: o-o……………..
Alien: You must be joking.
Human: UM………WELL…….
Alien: TELL ME YOU’RE JOKING. PLEASE.
Human: *patting the alien sympathetically* I’m…sorry?
i Still cant believe sneaking out is an Actual thing that teenagers Do
this is just so unrealistic to me like what the fuck how do yall do it??? i have Arguments and Questions
1. like what am i supposed to do if i live in a building??? do i just wait for the elevator?? do i take the stairs?? mind me there could be a Lot of stairs 2. how THE FUCK do yall manage to do all this shit without waking anyone up?? this is So Fake!! if i so much as sneeze into my pillow my mom will come into my room and see if my ass is okay and then complain that i woke her up 3. HOW THE FUCK DONT YOUR PARENTS REALIZE YALL ARE GONE?? AND HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO COME BACK?? WHAT THE FUCK!! 4. if my mom found out that id been going places in the middle of the night u bet your ass id be dead the next day 5. i dont believe in this concept At All
i mean i guess it’s possible the way american houses are built but it’s still a bit far fetched imo but yea growing up in Puerto Rico in an urbanizacion it was like lmao you can’t sneak out in a house like that. first of all our windows are miami style of whatever, second of all there’s only 1 functioning door (technically our house had 2 but 1 of them had potted plants on both sides so it was never used but in any case both were on the same side of the house), and the house is so small like you would hear someone opening and closing it. plus you just know at least 1 person on your street would be up and would spill that piping hot tea to your parents the next day.
so my sister snuck out of the house one night because we live in an old house in the country that’s always creaking and “settling” which, good news: is perfect for sneaking out because there’s always weird noises anyway; bad news: we’re in the middle of the woods and there’s always creepy fucking noises
but hey, what are white girls gonna do except sneak out at night and through the woods to go have sex with their boyfriends?
what could go wrong??
and I do literally mean through the woods. our driveway is a quarter of a mile long through actual wooded area, and she wasn’t smart enough to grab a flashlight. but she could sort of see the headlights of her boyfriend’s car at the very end so it wasn’t so bad going down to be picked up
except when she got dropped off, she had to make the trip back up the driveway, through the dark scary woods, with no light whatsoever, at like 3 am or some other Gonna Get White Girl Murdered time
and she was high as fuuuuuuuuuuck
so she’s creeping her way back up the driveway, trying to move slow or else she’ll fall off the ground and get lost in the sky forever. really fucking high
then she steps on a frog
because we also have a 3 acre “pond” like our property isn’t fucking creepy enough already and my first-time-to-ever-be-high sister stepped on a FROG and apparently it both squished and belched, and keep in mind that with no light whatsoever she doesn’t know what the fuck just happened AT ALL
I wake up to a series of frantic text messages
hlp he lp HEL
dont’ tell momd and dad
i jsut murdered somtheing
also, just for context, this is also the sister that pierced her own ears and gave herself a stick’n’poke tattoo with a lighter and my mom’s sewing needle because she “got restless” and picked a fight with a girl two grades above, half a foot taller, and probably a hundred pounds heavier AND WON
(it doesn’t matter if you’re smol if you get ‘em on the ground and get on top)
anyway
so waking up to an “I just murdered something” text from her was … actually kind of inevitable. siblings are either ride or die or no officer I’ve never seen that person before, and that night, I decided I was ride or die
so then I take MY dumb white girl ass out into the woods in the middle of the night, but at least I’m smart enough to take a flashlight. sister had already texted me she was “onthe driveways” but again, that’s a quarter mile journey
finally I arrive at the scene of the crime
sister: sitting in the gravel, crying, makeup a Mess
frog: laying still beside her, looking like a slightly smaller Jabba the Hut
she points at the frog and sobs that it’s a heart. obviously a frog. a fucking BIG ASS frog, but still. I’m relieved, but also super pissed, because I drug myself out of bed, snuck out too, and dangled my sumptuous human body in front of all the Forest Monsters on my way down here and there isn’t even a fucking body
just a frog, which I pick up to show her is not a heart, and turns out to only be stunned! not dead! still very much alive and full of pee!!
so it pisses all over me and slimes out of my hand, escaping into the night
also, I totally held my sister’s hand with my Piss Hand as I led her back home because she deserved it
Pretty sure “money can’t buy happiness” is meant to actually mean “don’t neglect emotional health and caring for the people in your life in the pursuit of more wealth than you need”, but instead middle-class and rich people use it to tell poor people “don’t strive to have financial security even though I have it”.
don’t get it twisted like i respect bugs for being the best they can be in spite of their specific assigned flesh prisons and their ecological significance but they need to stay the fuck away from me
Pretty sure “money can’t buy happiness” is meant to actually mean “don’t neglect emotional health and caring for the people in your life in the pursuit of more wealth than you need”, but instead middle-class and rich people use it to tell poor people “don’t strive to have financial security even though I have it”.
Jean:
Did you bring all your homemade sweets for the party?
Kitty:
Yes. I made a marshmallow Logan. See? His arms are crossed because he's mad at all the other marshmallow X-Men for annoying him. Do you like it?
“Oh my word. When did the English start drinking like that? You people drink like you don’t want to live.”—Moira MacTaggert, upon meeting Charles Xavier (via incorrectx-menquotes)
“Last week, I sent Kurt and Kitty to buy gas and instead they bought novelty cookie cutters, so now everything we eat is shaped like a dinosaur.”—Scott Summers (via incorrectx-menquotes)
I know a guy who ended up becoming a professional chef because of the tim burton charlie and the chocolate factory movie and i guarantee none of you will be able to guess how
ok so this movie came out like, 2005ish? And this kid was in his early teens, so 12-14 years old i guess. And he’s watching this movie and there’s the scene where the chewing gum kid, Violet something, is chewing the gum that tastes like a three course meal and the first two tastes are tomato soup and roast beef and that’s all well and good but then it gets to blueberry pie and OOP she’s all swollen up like a ten-foot tall human blueberry.
And this kid, being the age he was, had just kinda started puberty and might’ve had a little crush on Violet to start with, so all the feelings and hormones got a lil mixed up while watching that scene and he ended up with a great big inflation kink.
So this is a thing for a few more years, he’s cranking his hog to deviantart pictures of big ol balloon ladies and the kink develops (as they sometimes do) into one where he gets off from watching those videos where people eat a ton of food.
But then from there he starts to become interested, not in the person eating the food, but the food itself. Pretty soon he’s watching cooking video tutorials and attempting to cook for his family and within a couple years he’s got good. Real good. So good, in fact, that he publishes a modest cookbook at age 17 and makes enough money off selling it to buy himself a car. By the time he’s graduated highschool he’s had scholarships and apprenticeship offers from no less that 5 separate cooking schools, three of which were international.
He told me all this inbetween throwing up in a bathtub at a party we were both at. I hadn’t actually met him beforehand but id seen him around school a few times (he was a couple years older than me).
Last I heard of him, he’s working as the head chef in some big boy restaurant back in my city and has at least one award for something.
And that’s how some guy became a professional chef thanks to tim burtons charlie and the chocolate factory movie
