“really?” I say to inanimate objects that are not working like they usually do
“Stay.” I glare at inanimate objects that continuously fall over
“Thank you!” I say exhasperatedly to the inanimate objects when they do finally work right/stay put
“Sorry! I say to the table I bumped into
“SHHH” I say to the inanimate object that keeps making noise
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” I huff at the persistent kitchen timer.
“Don’t take that tone with me!” I exclaim at objects that make strange and sudden unknown noises.
“Stop crying, you’re fine,” I snap as I’m looking for the charger cord for the electronic device beeping demandingly at me.
“Oh nice, real mature,” I snarl at devices that suddenly stop working after I berate them for not working properly.
JESUS CHRIST I HAVE NEVER RELATED SO HARD IN MY LIFE
“Don’t you shout at me” to the till whenever I don’t hit the right button and it beeps shrilly at me.
Report: humans seem to believe that inanimate objects possess a spirit of some sort, and will often address them thinking the item will hear and understand. This makes our previous observations about the joy they experience when blowing things up quite disturbing.
Hey my computer has a mic it can hear me
“could you maybe just don’t” I ask a fallen soup lid
to add to this “humans are weird” thing did you know that humans are the only species on earth with the ability to throw things with any significant degree of accuracy and force (apes can throw with about the force of a human ten year old, but cant lock their wrists well enough for accuracy)
and we just never really think about it bc its so easy and simple to us that pretty much all of our sports are based around the concept of throwing things accurately
so what if the concept of projectile weapons takes most species FOREVER to get the hang of, or even come up with in the first place. a human goes onto a ship and throws some trash into the nearest reclaimer, shouts “kobe!” and all the other aliens on board absolutely LOSE THEIR MINDS
I definitely didn’t know this about humans but it’s actually really neat
‘This place needs a dartboard.’ *darts is explained* ‘You… throw sharp objects at a tiny point on a circle with the expectation of hitting it and mock those who do not achieve this amazing feat.’ ‘It’s better if you’ve had a couple of beers.’ ‘You insist that you’re more accurate when partially intoxicated. I have seen you intoxicated. Fine motor control is not something I associate with intoxication.’ ‘The one sport where doping is actually encouraged.’ ‘Humans. How. Just how. ’ ‘You think this is hard, try throwing cards.’
I’m now super enchanted with the idea that there are all these alien racs out there that basically didn’t do projectiles until at least they had geometry and aerodynamics worked out– no throwing stones or slings and arrows, nothing range until catapults with some heavy maths calculations behind them because they couldn’t eyeball it. And some of them not even having that– going from hand-to-hand to computer-targetted bombs, pretty much. And then coming to earth and finding out about spears and bows and arrows and slings and skipping stones– and suddenly there’s a rush on their homeworlds of all these really bad pop-xenopyschoanthropology books about the effect of being able to kill at a distance on our pyschocultural development, how it effects our perception of ourselves and the universe – all these bad science, lurid explanations about how this has effected our strange alien minds to give us warped senses of territoriality or death or social-unit-bonding.
Of all the humans are weird I like this one the most. Feels mundane enough yet just weird enough without making us out to be supersoldiers because I dunno I guess aliens have weak constitutions now or something..
Most ‘humans are weird’ things try to focus on the things humans can do that most animals can’t, but like, they kinda blow it out of proportion. Like sure humans are sturdier than most animals but not by THAT much.
Personally, I’ve always like the combination of facts that A) We’re obscenely flexible compared to anything with else with bones B) We have crazy endurance and C) We’re DTF pretty much whenever. And whatever, for that matter.
Super soldiers nothing, I’m pretty sure Humans would be the Weird Sex Alien.
Those ones are also decent and reasonable “humans can be cool space alien planet of hat biological archetypes too!”
humans:
internal organs are full of acid
eats poison for fun
can throw things like woah
can run for a long time even when normally you would get tired
flexy
probably will fuck you if you ask
Accurate.
Oh, hey, forgot about this one.
(Edit: just posted my full tag rant as a comment since it got cut off)
my problem with a lot of the ‘humans are space orcs’ posts, is that a lot of the things that come up make biological sense, when you consider our rough body shape (i.e. bipedal and high intelligence)
we’re more energy efficient and good at being pursuit predators BECAUSE WE ONLY NEED TWO LEGS, that’s HALF AS MANY LEGS, so we use less energy to move, and in order to do this (and many other things) we need larger brains, that can handle things like balance easily, and because we have two limbs that aren’t used for walking, they can be specialized for object manipulation which easily leads to dexterity and accuracy, and an advanced collarbone and shoulder joint and muscle control that leads to throwing things
a LOT of humans are space orcs posts are just, imagine this species that should have evolved all the same things as us, but is absolutely SHOCKED by it because for some biologically unlikely reason they aren’t basically the same thing, a lot of criticism of scifi ends up being ‘the aliens look too much like humans’, but you know what, a highly intelligent apex species with advanced communication WOULD LOOK A LOT LIKE US, as an apex species they’d most likely have evolved as predators, and therefore needed binocular vision (at least), plus BIOLOGY REALLY LIKES SYMMETRY so two eyes two ears two nostrils bipedal high intelligence advanced vocal communication etc, …are pretty much all BASIC REQUIREMENTS of any species that would develop enough for space travel
if anything should freak out other species about us it’s probably our psychology not our biology, we have an ABSURD range of sociological behavior and emotional triggers, we can be compassionate easily to the point of sacrificing our lives to an altruistic cause (we do this regularly!), but also like … sometimes we murder each other because of parking spots
our social psychology is NOT conducive to developing space travel, we’re so VOLATILE and we form cliques that hate each other, WE’RE NOT SUITED TO BEING IN FRAGILE CONFINEMENT PROTECTING US FROM THE VACUUM OF SPACE, OH AND OUR PROPULSION SYSTEMS ARE BASICALLY SLOW BOMBS, WE’RE FUCKING IDIOTS WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE SURVIVED LONG ENOUGH FOR SPACE TRAVEL
we’d kill each other in one heartbeat and die for each other in the next, we’re FUCKED UP psychologically as a species and THAT’s probably the weirdest thing about us, most space orc posts are just … how the biology of a species that got to our point SHOULD work
Okay but going back to “Humans are really good at throwing stuff”. Imagine how shocked and terrified aliens would be regarding hand grenades. Here is a very small explosive weapon which a human can casually throw in the midst of alien soldiers. Very small, very powerful and humans can carry loads of them and use them without any kind of targeting aid.
And now imagine if most of the other aliens had the ability to spit liquid at about a dozen meters or more with many standard technologies designed to make use of this mundane ability.
And then humans come along and just can’t.
A human spits some saliva at like 3-4 meters and tells the alien he is really good at this and the alien just stands there with a “Are you Effing kidding me?” face.
But now combine both of those things:
“So let me get this straight Xahar of the Crimson Sand: You can spit your goo at about a dozen meters?” “It’s not goo Human Steve. Shinegh plays an important role in many of my cultu…” “Ok, shinegh sorry. So you can spit your shinegh at a bout a dozen meters, with pinpoint accuracy and enough kinetic force to at least stun a small creature. Is that correct?” “Indeed Human Steve. It was one of the favourite past times of my pack-mates and I, during our juvenile phase to shoot our shinegh at mohoks during their breeding season.” “Yeah that… So you can spit far with great accuracy, but are still unable to crumble a piece of paper and throw it into the trash can across the room by hand?” *Proceeds to do the exact thing* “Why do you always have to flaunt your talents in front of me Human Steve?”
Some piece of equipment is activated by a button placed in a way that everyone canactivate it with their shinegh and then Steve from Earth just showed up with a round object he called a “baseball” one day and threw it at the button from across the room.
The entire bridge went quiet like it wasn’t an emergency because whaaaa?
We almost impeached a president for cheating on his fucking wife but we can’t even impeach Trump for putting children in fucking cages
Y’all are fucking annoying
It’s worse than that. We didn’t almost impeach Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was impeached–the senate just ruled to keep him in office.
And what we impeached him for was perjury and obstruction of justice.
Aka lying and getting in the way of official investigations.
You know. The things Trump has been doing since day one. On live TV and twitter. Where we have fucking proof of it.
Yet here we are. And there he fucking still is.
This is why we have to vote this November, guys. We have got to take back congress. Trump will almost certainly be impeached if we can get enough seats back.
Please please, I beg of you. Even if you don’t love your democratic candidates this November; even if they’ve done ‘problematic’ things in the past–please vote. The people who sat it out in 2016 because they didn’t love Hillary, or were bitter about Bernie, or fucking voted third party–they are the ones who carry the weight of this administration. The republicans went in undivided. The democrats went in split. And now children are being torn from their families, legal citizens are being deported, and we have fucking Nazis on the rise again.
I get that you want your politician’s views to align perfectly with yours. I do. But sometimes in politics you have to chose the lesser of two evils. We didn’t do that in 2016.
I beg of you. Do it this year.
You may not be able to find a progressive candidate whose ideas precisely align with yours…but I PROMISE you that the fascist racist misogynist white supremacists have candidates whose ideas EXACTLY align with theirs.
Indeed so.
“Perfect is the enemy of done” seems relevant here
me sitting here two weeks before the midterm elections watching my twitter and tumblr feeds fill up w/ memes and discourse about how voting is useless and democrats aren’t gonna save us: uh guys? guys? hey guys? guys? you guys? guys? hey you guys? you guys? guys? uh guys? guys? guys? guys?
one of the most common tactics of the right isn’t to change who you vote for. they know that’s unlikely to work. it’s to do everything in their power to make sure you decide to stay home.
republican turnout wasn’t actually that high in the last election. democratic turnout was just fucking abysmal, because of attitudes like this.
fuck every democrat who says the issue of trans rights is a “distraction.” fuck every single liberal who say that the threat of stripping every trans person of legal recognition is a red herring or a losing issue and if we focus on it too long we’ll throw the election. we’re talking about human rights, access to medical care, sex education, discrimination, citizenship, and a whole lot else, for millions of people.
trans people aren’t a “distraction.” we’re human beings. the fact that so many liberals turn their backs on trans people is fucking despicable.
Okay…but this, right here? This is exactly what the Republican party wants. Young voters turning against the Democratic party and either not voting at all, or voting in favor of some third party candidate that has literally zero chance of pulling in enough votes to win. They want division among the ranks. They want to split our vote.
In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important. The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves. They deliberately drop issues that they know are hot-button topics because these are the topics that have the potential to be the most divisive.
They’re awful but they’re not dumb. They know trans rights is an issue that could potentially split the democratic vote. It’s an issue that’s very heavily weighted toward the younger side of the party, which again, was a deliberate move on their part. If they can convinced you that the “big bad Democrats don’t care about you little trans and nonbinary kids so why bother,” then they’ve effectively won the election in a walk because the democrats went in divided–again.
Look, the democratic party isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. But it’s literally the only party that has a snowball’s chance in hell at overtaking the republican majority right now. If we as trans and nonbinary individuals ever want our identities respected and protected, it’s the only party that’s going to be able to get us there, because it’s the party going in the direction we need to go. If you want to vote in favor of our rights, then vote Democrat. No number of videos with pennies is going to change the fact that right now, in this political climate, third party candidates are not going to have enough power to effect the changes we want.
Warning against something being a distraction doesn’t mean “don’t look at it or worry about it,” it means, “hey, I know this is majorly upsetting, and absolutely something needs to be done, but don’t let it divide us.” It’s literally because the issue is so important that democrats are warning against it as a distraction tactic–if we want to prevent that kind of change from happening under republican rule, we have to keep our heads and not let them keep us from voting as a unified party.
Please don’t let the political rhetoric make you think that the democratic party isn’t going to be fighting for us and our rights. That’s kind of exactly what the Republican party wants you to think. It’s a division tactic. Don’t fall for it.
The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the “hot-headed liberals” all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
I’ve been voting since 1998. This is what they do every single election.
You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The Democratic candidates aren’t perfect. But they for damn sure are better than the crap the Republicans are putting on our plates.
This is not the election to hold out for purity. That’s what happened in 2016 and that’s what got us Trump and everything else bad that’s happened, and WILL HAPPEN if we don’t turn out the GOP in two weeks.
One overlooked thing that really sets the Lord of the Rings films apart from other franchises is how earnest they are-
Most movies are so afraid of being “cheesy” that whenever they say something like “friendship is the most powerful force in the world” they quickly undercut it with a joke to show We Don’t Really Believe That! 😉 Even Disney films nowadays have the characters mock their own movie’s tropes (”if you start singing, I’m gonna throw up!”) It’s like winking at the camera: “See, audience? We know this is ridiculous! We’re in on the joke!”
But Lord of the Rings is just 12.5 hours of friendship and love being the most powerful forces in the world, played straight. Characters have conversations about how much their home and family and friends mean to them, how hope is eternal, how there is so much in the world that’s worth living for…. and the film doesn’t apologize for that. There’s no winking at the audience about How Cheesy and Silly All This Is; it’s just. Completely in earnest.
And when Lord of the Rings does “lean on the fourth wall” to talk about storytelling within the film, it’s never to make jokes about How Ridiculous These Storytelling Tropes are (the way most films do)…. but instead to talk about how valuable these stories can be. Like Sam’s Speech at the end of the Two Towers: the greatest stories are ones that give you something to believe in, give you hope, that help you see there are things in a bleak violent world that are worth living for
Earnestness is so much cooler than all the hip cynicism in the world. You go LOTR
i saw this post earlier about therapists and it reminded me of my old therapist paul, who in my opinion is one of the greatest men alive and who did not put up with my bullshit for even one second
anyway i go in to see paul one week in the summer of 2016, and i’m doing my usual bullshit which consists of me talking shit about myself, and paul is staring at me, and then he cuts me off and says that he’s got a new tool for helping people recognize when they’re using negative language, and gets up and goes over to his desk
and i’m like alright hit me with that sweet sweet self-help article my man, because i’m a linguistic learner and whenever paul’s like here i have a tool for you to use it’s pretty much always an article or a book or something
paul opens a drawer, takes something out, and turns back around. i stare.
i say, paul.
is that a nerf gun.
yeah, says paul.
i say, are you gonna shoot me with a nerf gun in this professional setting.
he happily informs me that that’s really up to me, isn’t it. and sits back down. and gestures, like, go ahead, what were you saying?
and i squint suspiciously and start back up about how i’m having too much anxiety to leave the house to run errands, like it was a miracle to even get here, like i’ve forgone getting groceries for the past week and that’s so stupid, what a stupid issue, i’m an idiot, how could i–
a foam dart hits me in the leg.
i go, hey! because my therapist just shot me in the leg. paul blinks at me placidly and raises an eyebrow. i squint again.
i say, slowly, it’s– not a stupid issue, i’m not stupid, but it’s frustrating me and i don’t want it to be a problem i’m having.
no dart this time. okay. sweet.
so the rest of the hour passes with me intermittently getting nailed with tiny foam darts and then swearing and then fixing my language and, wouldn’t you know it, i start liking myself a little more by the end of the session, which is mildly infuriating because paul can tell and he’s very smug about it
anyway i leave his office and the lady having the next appointment walks in and i hear what’s all over the floor? and paul very seriously says cognitive behavioral therapy tools.
The “I won’t hesitate, bitch” vine but @ friends who don’t love themselves
i always thought of a king sized bed as being a bit bigger than a queen, but now that i have one, i can tell you that a king sized bed is an absurdity. i can sprawl out, and my husband can sprawl out, and the cat can sprawl out, and none of us are touching. i reach out in the night, and find only pillows and plush walruses. i reach further and eventually find his elbow. he rolls over the comforters to try and find me. “i have crossed oceans of bed to be with you,” he says. there is a vast expanse of bed untouched, unmapped, unexplored. the cat is still trying to sleep on my face.
When I was a very small child, my mom used to bury coins in my sandbox, leave huge boot prints in the sand, and tell me pirates had come in the night and buried treasure. I would be out there happily for hours, with my little sieve, and my mom got a quiet morning to herself for the price of a handful of pennies.
I was always kind of skeptical about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, because visiting every kid in the world did not seem reasonable. But the pirates only visited me, so they were probably real.
So that’s the story of how I ended up being an archaeologist. How about you?
Christianity and conservatism are not compatible ideologies. Conservatives, socially, are against refugees, against equality, and fiscally are against social programs and financial aid to those in need.
Jesus demanded they help refugees, demanded equality, and demanded aid to the poor.
To be conservative means to not be Christian, and to claim you are both is to be a hypocrite.
Something Jesus also condemned.
I don’t think you know much about either ideology
Sincerely, a conservative Christian
I’ve read the bible six times, I know what it says.
I’m also a polisci student, and pay attention to what conservatives do. In fact I’ve studied conservatism, in addition to the other political ideologies that exist in our world.
Jesus said:
When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat
them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your
native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
(Leviticus 19:33-34)
When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very
edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go
over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.
Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. (Leviticus 19:9-10)
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the
foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are
to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in
Egypt.(Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and
you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I
needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I
was in prison and you came to visit me. (Matthew 25:25-36)
Just to quote a very, very few.
Conservatives repeatedly repeal and cut back programs that feed the poor ,including poor children, cut back education, and cut back healthcare, all things vital to the poor. Conservatives repeatedly want no refugees, want no immigrants (travelers), including children. In fact, many conservatives want to throw the existing immagrants (travelers) out of the country (and need I remind you, Jesus was not a “legal” immagrant, so to claim ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigrants are any different is still to ignore what the bible has commanded of you.
I know exactly what each ideology is about. You are a hypocrite, and not a Christian. You only call yourself one while flaunting what was commanded of you.
in the field of religious studies, we often call jesus one of the first radical leftists. he was a social anarchist with communist leanings, and that’s why his draw was such a threat to the imperial system—because he was calling for the dismantling of oppressive power structures. the conservative romans were the ones who killed jesus, and conservatives after are the ones continuing to kill his message thousands of years after his death.
Don’t forget he fought against slut-shaming, embraced alcoholics and the homeless, and straight up said you can’t get into heaven if you die rich.
When I say conservative Christians would deport Jesus if they actually saw him or blacklist him if they heard him…this is why.
And it’s funny because those fools are the Pharisees and can’t even see that.
The greatest commandment of Christianity is to love your neighbor like yourself and that’s not what conservatives do.
