I’m REALLY tired of the dark “aliens are evil” stories.
“Aliens think we are food” this. “Aliens think we’re a plague” that. And the “aliens are so much smarter and think us as puny ants” this and that.
I especially hate the “aliens are ugly monsters” part. Like, propaganda much?
At least some of us -I mean them! Some of THEM aren’t evil. In fact! Very (and I mean VERY) few of them are truly bad creatures.
Where’s our “aliens are good” this? And our “aliens are actually really impressed by human understanding of space despite early stages of galactic travel” that? And maybe a little “haha, once you get used to it, aliens are kinda cute” this and that?
I heard of a project called “humanity lost” by some guy named Callum Diggle and became interested in the whole “humans invade other planets trope”.
I would really like to see other people’s take on that subject because us just invading other planets and showing our worst and most prevalent side to a species who has never even known about us is scary.
It would probably be worst for the aliens if they’re barely a tribal species and had no men’s of defence against technologically advanced species.
(please reblog I want this to spread)
“Take us to your leader.”
The cartoonish words left the mouth of a true freak of nature. A creature missing a set of arms and missing way too many eyes. Teeth were overly abundant, though. Those additions were as clear as day as it gleefully sounded out that phrase.
“Our what?”
There was a roar among the creatures. If our alien was familiar he would have identified the roar as laughter. Unfortunately, he was not familiar, and unfortunately, it was a terrifying sound.
The noise was enough to make the smaller creature pull back his own lips and bare his teeth. If the other aliens - humans - were familiar they’d know the smaller alien was not smiling.
They were familiar. At this point, they had the small species’ fear expressions well-documented.
Moments before, the hero had been out in the field, stargazing. Eyes on a star that had been especially bright tonight.
And brighter, and brighter.
A ship - the vague shape of a pitcher - landed only several yards ahead of him. And out came three monsters - aliens! Just like in the theaters.
And now said aliens had him tied with his four arms behind his back.
“…the president, you mean? I don’t think I can do that…” the alien said.
The creature only smiled, this time without baring teeth.
“It wasn’t a… nevermind it.” The human looked him up and down. There was a moment of pity - it was like dodo birds, how easy these aliens were to pick off - but the pity went unregistered to the confused little creature. “He’ll do. Bring him to the ship.”
The other two, on command, hoisted the alien into the air.
“Wait… now hold on!” The alien squirmed and kicked, but to no avail. “I can’t get the president, but I can get my dad! He’s basically, like… myleader.”
He was shoved inside the ship and slammed down to his knees.
“Does that not count? I can get my teachers?”
His eyes traced up the walls of the room. Miniscule but undoubtedly sharp objects lined the shelving units. In the far back, rows and rows of tiny vials were behind a glass case. Inside was blue liquid that looked a lot like blood.
Speaking as a human, I think aliens are the weird ones because they don’t randomly have the urge to get out of bed in the middle of the night and clean their room
Aliens are the weird ones because they don’t have “waiting mode.”
When they have plans later - in three hours, for example- they can still be productive. Maybe do some basic cleaning. Draw a simple picture, even. Or watch a movie! :D
Haha, aliens are so weird.
Aliens. Are. SO WEIRD. That when they read for classes. They can actually read the source material. And. Not. Zone. Out. :)
An alien cannot properly see red. It’s not that she is color blind, it is simply normal for her species. Humans take a notice to this quickly, noting the irony that an alien species who can’t see red somehow lives on a red planet.
Her two human friends won’t stop telling her she’s “missing out on color theory” and talking about how she can’t paint for “children’s hospitals.” She doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
we are never going to let that post die are we
What’s a Tumblr? They just know of the meme through screenshots from the Galaxy famous Toklr
“This should do it.” It looked down at itself, pleased.
The two - rather long - legs jut out under it’s torso. It used it’s new - ew - five fingers to feel along it’s skin, feeling the bumps of a ribcage underneath. A heartbeat too.
In front of it was a mirror, and staring back at itself was a human. Well, an illusion of one.
Time and time again, the newly star bound aliens, humans, had infiltrated it’s species ranks through elaborate disguises. They got better at it every time.
Not only were humans great with what they call “make up” but they had a way of mimicking their behaviors. It’s species tried to replicate this. Failed to. In the end, they had something better.
A team of highly immoral scientists who were given boundless permission to try whatever the hell they wanted. And they went with genetic mutation.
It was a painful change, and slow. Agonizingly slow. But now, it was a super solider with one superpower. A shape-shifter.
And it was time to test it out.
It strolled out of the bathroom and into the eating area where various alien species were seated. Only one human - the unwitting test subject - was present.
If this could pass for normal conversation, this could pass for war.
It strolled right up to the other creature - a man who had not yet seen him - and sat down.
“I’m glad to see one other human on this station,” it said.
The human non-committedly looked up. Only to jump with a start after taking it in.
“What are you?” he said.
“A human?” it said. If it’s species could sweat, it would do so by now.
The man stared at it a moment. He turned to the alien on his right and pointed to his left.
“Forgive me if this question is batshit insane, but what do you see?”
“Two humans?” The alien had three eyes.
Her species’ third eye was famous for detecting the most miniscule details and then committing it to subconscious memory. The rise and fall of a chest. The careful rythem of a human heart. How often - or little - a human blinks. Even human’s make-up tricks couldn’t bypass her species’ extra form of security.
“So it is,” said the man. She turned away and it found itself blinking quickly in relief. It cut that out when the human turned to it. “Sorry, I guess you’re just real ugly.”
“Ugh, rude.” All humans are ugly.
He scooted in closer on the bench and leaned in towards it. It found itself leaning away, but couldn’t help but notice the bead of sweat on the human’s forehead and how the pupils were shrunken as far as they could.
“Wanna hear an old Earth tale?”
“I’m sure I know it.” Was this a test?
“I doubt you know this one. My grandfather experienced it himself.” He leaned away. It had stop itself from blinking too rapidly again. “This is about an Earth cryptid.”
“Bigfoot?” it said, but nodded as if it already knew.
“Everyone knows Bigfoot,” he laughed. “No, he was driving down a dark country road unlit by street lights. He didn’t have his brights on - that’s important to the story, you see - but heaven knows why.”
Brights??? What are brights???
“Down the road an animal was crossing. A simple male deer with antlers. He couldn’t see its body yet, but he was familiar with the eyes. They glowed as his car sped closer.”
“He slowed as the deer became more apparent, and eventually came to a stop when the creature wouldn’t move. By now, he could see the antlers, the four legs, the neck. Not in detail, mind you, but he could see it ”
Other aliens in the room- not hearing this conversation - were trickling out of the room. There was no dramatic reason for this, they simply finished their lunch. The human, not paying any attention to his own lunch, continued the story.
“It’s not uncommon for deer to freeze, especially when lights flood their eyes. So my grandfather gave it a moment to realize it should run. When seconds ticked by, he honked at it.”
“There was something… off… about the deer. It looked every way like a deer, but the longer he stared, the longer that just didn’t seem right.”
“Was it a deer?” it said.
“It was not.”
“What was it?”
“Not a deer.”
The alien found itself frown at this in a perfectly human way.
“Time went on, and my grandfather decided to turn on the brights to try and see the creature better. And it was still… a deer… but not…”
It found its frown deepening.
“What’s worse was it began to move. Similar to a deer, but all wrong. Like maybe its legs bent the wrong way. Or perhaps the legs were too long. It was every way like a deer, but it just was not.”
“He drove home as soon as that not deer was out of his path. And yes, he found himself alive the next morning. But that encounter disturbed him, so he recounted it to everyone. And many people - especially in that town - could tell him their own stories.”
“…okay?”
“Well, that story is funny. Probably a figment of his imagination, but it does reflect a very real human instinct.”
This was another test. “Would this be something I know of?”
“It’s called uncanny valley. It occurs to us when something looks human… but is not.”
“Why?”
“Well, rumor has it that it was a instinct formed from a predator. Something that looked human but was not. A not human.”
“A not human? Is this true?”
“No,” he said. He laughed. “No, we most likely developed it for something a lot more practical. Corpses, you see. They carry a lot of bacteria, so we have a fear of them.”
“…interesting.”
“I have that very same feeling of you,” he said. The room was empty besides the two. He reached for his bottle above his lunch tray.
“But I’m not a corpse?”
“You’re about to be.”
The human tossed down the bottle, effectively cracking off the bottom half and forming his weapon.
It shape-shifted as it scurried away to retreat from the very much human.
@timeandspacelord I know exactly what you’re talking about and you know what? You’re so right. Thank you for reminding me, I hate it. /j
So ya’ll know about how stealth is a big thing on our planet, right? Predators use it to catch prey, prey use it to avoid predators, etc. etc. What if that’s exclusively an earth thing?
Like, if death worlds were rare and the need for stealth was less needed or even non-existant it’d be pretty surprising to aliens to find out just how important stealth is and how good humans (and Earth animals in general) are at it.
Smaller humans can curl up into tight spaces to hide. Camouflage is something we’re very good at with things like ghillie suits and camo facepaint to make ourselves near invisible.
We’re pretty good at staying still and will even cover our mouths to make our breathing quieter. Sometimes we even sneak up on people without meaning to. We’ve gotten so good at hiding we can even hide in plain sight.
Hell, even a portion of our entertainment contains stealth, we have childrens games like hide and seek that make us better at it and there’s even an entire genre of video game dedicated to it. Suffice to say stealth is something we’re pretty ok at.
Now imagine a human is put onto an alien ship as a crewmate and as the aliens learn more about humanity they decide to play hide and seek to learn more about us.
They go around and find the other races pretty easily, but they can’t find the human.
After 30 minutes they get s bit annoyed
After 1 hour they’re a bit worried
After 3 hours they’re panicking that they just lost their human friend and begin running around the ship screaming that they give up and begging the human to come out.
The human stands up from behind a pipe or something and ask why the crew couldn’t find them. What proceeds is Aliens becoming utterly horrified at our ability to remain concealed so well for so long.
Long story short, they never play hide and seek again.
Alien: “Human Steve, I understand you hate bathroom duty, but this week it’s your turn to- Oh goddammit! Where is he!? Dammit Steve, you can’t do this every time-”
“This should do it.” It looked down at itself, pleased.
The two - rather long - legs jut out under it’s torso. It used it’s new - ew - five fingers to feel along it’s skin, feeling the bumps of a ribcage underneath. A heartbeat too.
In front of it was a mirror, and staring back at itself was a human. Well, an illusion of one.
Time and time again, the newly star bound aliens, humans, had infiltrated it’s species ranks through elaborate disguises. They got better at it every time.
Not only were humans great with what they call “make up” but they had a way of mimicking their behaviors. It’s species tried to replicate this. Failed to. In the end, they had something better.
A team of highly immoral scientists who were given boundless permission to try whatever the hell they wanted. And they went with genetic mutation.
It was a painful change, and slow. Agonizingly slow. But now, it was a super solider with one superpower. A shape-shifter.
And it was time to test it out.
It strolled out of the bathroom and into the eating area where various alien species were seated. Only one human - the unwitting test subject - was present.
If this could pass for normal conversation, this could pass for war.
It strolled right up to the other creature - a man who had not yet seen him - and sat down.
“I’m glad to see one other human on this station,” it said.
The human non-committedly looked up. Only to jump with a start after taking it in.
“What are you?” he said.
“A human?” it said. If it’s species could sweat, it would do so by now.
The man stared at it a moment. He turned to the alien on his right and pointed to his left.
“Forgive me if this question is batshit insane, but what do you see?”
“Two humans?” The alien had three eyes.
Her species’ third eye was famous for detecting the most miniscule details and then committing it to subconscious memory. The rise and fall of a chest. The careful rythem of a human heart. How often - or little - a human blinks. Even human’s make-up tricks couldn’t bypass her species’ extra form of security.
“So it is,” said the man. She turned away and it found itself blinking quickly in relief. It cut that out when the human turned to it. “Sorry, I guess you’re just real ugly.”
“Ugh, rude.” All humans are ugly.
He scooted in closer on the bench and leaned in towards it. It found itself leaning away, but couldn’t help but notice the bead of sweat on the human’s forehead and how the pupils were shrunken as far as they could.
“Wanna hear an old Earth tale?”
“I’m sure I know it.” Was this a test?
“I doubt you know this one. My grandfather experienced it himself.” He leaned away. It had stop itself from blinking too rapidly again. “This is about an Earth cryptid.”
“Bigfoot?” it said, but nodded as if it already knew.
“Everyone knows Bigfoot,” he laughed. “No, he was driving down a dark country road unlit by street lights. He didn’t have his brights on - that’s important to the story, you see - but heaven knows why.”
Brights??? What are brights???
“Down the road an animal was crossing. A simple male deer with antlers. He couldn’t see its body yet, but he was familiar with the eyes. They glowed as his car sped closer.”
“He slowed as the deer became more apparent, and eventually came to a stop when the creature wouldn’t move. By now, he could see the antlers, the four legs, the neck. Not in detail, mind you, but he could see it ”
Other aliens in the room- not hearing this conversation - were trickling out of the room. There was no dramatic reason for this, they simply finished their lunch. The human, not paying any attention to his own lunch, continued the story.
“It’s not uncommon for deer to freeze, especially when lights flood their eyes. So my grandfather gave it a moment to realize it should run. When seconds ticked by, he honked at it.”
“There was something… off… about the deer. It looked every way like a deer, but the longer he stared, the longer that just didn’t seem right.”
“Was it a deer?” it said.
“It was not.”
“What was it?”
“Not a deer.”
The alien found itself frown at this in a perfectly human way.
“Time went on, and my grandfather decided to turn on the brights to try and see the creature better. And it was still… a deer… but not…”
It found its frown deepening.
“What’s worse was it began to move. Similar to a deer, but all wrong. Like maybe its legs bent the wrong way. Or perhaps the legs were too long. It was every way like a deer, but it just was not.”
“He drove home as soon as that not deer was out of his path. And yes, he found himself alive the next morning. But that encounter disturbed him, so he recounted it to everyone. And many people - especially in that town - could tell him their own stories.”
“…okay?”
“Well, that story is funny. Probably a figment of his imagination, but it does reflect a very real human instinct.”
This was another test. “Would this be something I know of?”
“It’s called uncanny valley. It occurs to us when something looks human… but is not.”
“Why?”
“Well, rumor has it that it was a instinct formed from a predator. Something that looked human but was not. A not human.”
“A not human? Is this true?”
“No,” he said. He laughed. “No, we most likely developed it for something a lot more practical. Corpses, you see. They carry a lot of bacteria, so we have a fear of them.”
“…interesting.”
“I have that very same feeling of you,” he said. The room was empty besides the two. He reached for his bottle above his lunch tray.
“But I’m not a corpse?”
“You’re about to be.”
The human tossed down the bottle, effectively cracking off the bottom half and forming his weapon.
It shape-shifted as it scurried away to retreat from the very much human.
Hey, I work fireworks now and I actually have some context for this! This particular show is pretty infamous and was brought up during my safety course, and what happened wasn’t technically a computer glitch: it was moreso human error on several levels.
So when you make a fireworks show, you can design it to be set to music and you can tell that to your show computer. There’s a setting called catch-up, which ordinarily would be activated if your show somehow became offset with the music so you don’t ruin the timing for the entire show. Additionally, as another commenter notes there are multiple barges involved in the show - each one of those ships has a computer attached that have to be enabled before the show can shoot. Normally it’s advised you don’t enable the computers until just before show time, but in this instance all the computers had been turned on early (keep in mind this big of a mistake hadn’t really happened before, so people being a bit lax isn’t terribly surprising).
Now, before you put the computers live, you can run the show program to check all your connections and make sure the timing is correct without actually firing the show. The lead supervisor on this show decided to test the last 8 seconds of the show to make sure everything would be smooth for the big finale. Remember that catch-up function? So all of the show computers were live, and they did what they had been instructed to do. They caught up to the last eight seconds. All at once.
Apologies if I got any details wrong, it has been 2 years since I did that course and this was essentially a funny anecdote for why you don’t set the show computer live early, but yeah. This was not a computer error, just a people error
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.”
I remember reading A Short History of Nearly Everything a few years ago and in his introduction the author (Bill Bryson) spoke at length about how odd it was that life developed in a flammable atmosphere. And that we are Dependent on that dangerous gas to live! How weird. He postulated that aliens coming to visit would look askance at us.
