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.’

And then the aliens learn what it means to “facepalm” despite not having palms per se….

Aliens: Well at least you’re not immortal. Your planet is teeming with predators and disease what’s your average lifespan; 30-40?

Human: 70-80.

Other Human: My grandma was 102 before she died.

Alien: A FUCKING CENTURY? What killed her a stiff breeze?

OH: nah, cancer and liver failure. She smoke til the day she died and drank like a fish.

Alien: wait like…spontaneous cellular mutation and IMBIBING Poison? Surely these aren’t common!

Humans: …er…

Aliens: HOLY SHIT DUDE.

SPACE AUSTRALIA @archmagenutblast

ok like these are interesting and all, but i want to know what the aliens do that make us go wtf. like ones that regularly go do repairs on their space ships without putting on a suit because they can release the air bubbles in their body and the radiation doesnt really bother them. they just put on like a fucking sweater and go repair the cracked ship window. they have to take breaks to go warm up and all, but over all its nbd. but then you stick them in like a pond and they’re just like abort abort its too much im dying

>“Human, forgive my asking…”
>“Is it about the mountain climbing?”
>“We…do not understand your reasoning behind scaling su-”
>“Yeah, it’s the mountain climbing. What do you want to know?”
>“The mountains on my world are roughly concurrent with yours. But we didn’t scale their peaks until after we developed short-range space travel. The first things to go there were probes and drones.”
>“That’s a shame. You could have been up there long before that.”
>“But you…no offence, but your people haven’t even mastered atmospheric travel before attempting to climb your mountains.”
>“So?”
>“So? Many of you died trying to climb them. From faulty, primitive equipment, the weather, don’t get me started on your blasted weather patterns, the weather turning against you, not to mention a sheer lack of insi-”
>“Your name was…Sulp Niar, is that right?”
>“It’s not just Sul…yes, that is part of my name.”
>“Listen, Sulp. I know you and your friends think we’re stupid, crazy, stupidly crazy as a species.”
>“I-I would nev-”
>“I will admit, we’ve done more than our fair share of stupid on our planet. Some of our stunts were bad enough to leave some scars on her. But let me ask you something. How long did it take for your species to advance from early flight to entering orbit?”
>“…one hundred eighty-two cycles.”
>“Humans managed that in under seventy ye-cycles.”
>“Seventy cy-”
>“And a hundred cycles after we developed submersible water vehicles, we managed to land in the deepest trench, the lowest spot, on our planet. Give or take.”
>“I can’t…no other species has accomplished such things.”
>“And I bet no other species has experienced the losses to achieve them. One time, a man tried to use a hot air balloon to travel to the north pole, in the Arctic.”
>“But that doesn’t…there’s no way that would have worked.”
>“It didn’t. He disappeared shortly after liftoff, crashed a few days later, and tried walking home while the ice flowed against him. We found his remains almost thirty years after the fact.”
>“He was a fool. He should have known better than to try that.”
>“No, that man’s a hero. He tried something new, something that inspired people in the future to still try, to this day. His remains were taken back home and giving the utmost respect, despite his failure. Sulp, there was another man, who tried to scale our tallest mountain.”
>“Did he fail, too?”
>“Honestly, we don’t know. He disappeared trying to make a rush for the peak, just before a snowstorm hit. We found his body almost seventy years later. He fell, and his axe bounced off a rock and killed him. We never found the camera he would have used to photograph his success, and his wallet was missing a photo he would have placed on the peak.”
>“Where are you going with this?”
>“Before he made his last attempt, someone asked him why he bothered to scale Mount Everest. What is the point, he asked. Just like you’ve done earlier.”
>“And…what did this human say in return?”
>“He answered with three words. Three words that inspired us to look beyond what we cannot do, beyond what we won’t be able to do for a while.”
>“What were they?”
>“Because it’s there.”

BECAUSE IT’S THERE