Wednesday, October 18.
A dog eating a tomato
The audacity of this chump. If ever you feel like you're stealing a living, like you should be contributing more to society, if the productivity guilt of late-stage capitalism gnaws away, insidiously, at the edges of your conscience, cast your mind back to this footage. Munching on the crop like he pays the bills.
A dog eating a tomato? A dog stealing a tomato? That is the question on everybody's lips this Wednesday, October 18.
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Me: Okay brain, we got the next fic of one stop soup shop done. We can take another break on it, and when we come back, we can start with the next fic in order, right?
My Brain: ....
Me: ...right?
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“Oh great,” Tim said with a hysterical bubble of laughter. “Jason’s a vampire now. That’s great. Cool. Has he, um, has he been once since he came out of his grave? Wait— is that why he came out of his grave?”
Jason weakly flicked Tim off.
“What! You are literately drinking blood right now! Excuse me for making leaps of logic.”
“Okay Tim,” Dick said, lightly shoving at Tim. “Why don’t you go get Jason’s first aid kit from his bathroom and take a few deep breaths while you’re at it.”
“Don’t act like I’m being the weird one!” Tim said. He did stand though, because okay, yeah, the first aid kit was important. Jason was still bleeding out, even if he was also, er, taking blood in. “You’re the freak for being so calm about this! How are you being so calm.”
“Years of being a big brother,” Dick said with a terrifyingly serene smile.
“You are so fucked up. All of you all,” Tim said, motioning to the group on the now bloody floor as he walked to the bathroom, “are so fucked up.”
“Love you too, baby bird!”
Danny was just giggling.
“The laughter doesn’t really help,” Tim heard Dick say even from the bathroom.
“Know I’m fucked up,” Danny replied cheerfully.
What even was their life at this point?
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Semi-related to my post on how human conservation practices, but I have a cold today, and it's got me thinking about biological altruism—the biological imperative to put other creatures ahead of yourself, to benefit the group.
When talking about possible interactions with other species, we talk a lot about humans being crazy and thrill-seeking and impossible to kill. Never use a warning shot as an incentive to keep humans out of a fight; it'll just make them angry. And that's true. But a valid criticism I've seen in the "Earth is a death world" community is that according to our understanding of evolution, every planet must be some form of death world. Competition fosters evolution—the wolf with sharper claws survives when its litter mates die. You can't reach space travel without some casualties along the way.
But the dog survives because it makes friends with the strange ape carrying a sharp stick. And the strange ape survives because it befriends the wolf. Underneath the death world is an inextricable and undeniable layer of the bond world; the love world; the world, together.
I imagine some worlds are not death worlds. They're peaceful and tranquil. I suspect there are worlds far more deadly than Earth, where the skies rain diamonds, harder than any substance we know with the species to match. And I imagine that they are united in their confusion at the duality of humankind.
Today is a great example: I have a cold, and I want someone to take care of me, but the people who would are immunocompromised, also sick, or live 8 hours away, respectfully. I also want no one within the walls of my apartment or I will eat them. I feel gross, I feel tired, and I don't want a single human being anywhere near me, even if they did bring soup.
In my constant scrolling through my phone today, I decided to look up why the hell I feel so bad—why everyone feels so bad when they're ill. And the answer surprised me. I always thought it was because your immune system is active, so it's using a lot of your energy. That is part of it. Another part is that your brain and body are communicating across the blood-brain barrier to fight the infection, which is rare and energetically expensive.
But that doesn't explain everything, and according to more current research, it could also be what's called the Eyam Hypothesis: that we feel so gross, so we instinctively isolate from other people. We're too tired to deal with others, and so we don't infect them. Misanthropy for the good of the species. Of course, it can also backfire: one of the criticisms of the Eyam Hypothesis is that humans also instinctively care for each other. If my brother has a headache, I drive to the store for Advil.
Personally, I think it's a little bit of both: biological altruism. Either way, the majority live on. The first thought I had this morning when I woke up wasn't "I feel gross" it was "there's no way I'm going to work today." And while that might not be everyone's first thought, you don't even have to be a particularly altruistic person to not want to leave your home or your bed when you're sick. It's inborn.
And so when the human named Ismail comes down with a case of the interstellar common cold, his alien friend Dyos grows very concerned. Ismail is usually intensely social, almost off-puttingly so. Some crew members joke about how his quarters are for sleeping and prayer only; if he's home alone? You should be worried. But when Dyos demands an answer to the severity of Ismail's malady, the other humans just nod knowingly.
"Nah, he's okay, the medics already cleared him. It's not a severe infection."
"But there are so many...fluids. And his body has changed color."
There is a moment of confusion there until they remember that Dyos's species can see in the infrared color spectrum.
"Nah, that's just a low-grade fever. It should break in the next couple days."
"But he doesn’t want to play chess today," Dyos insists.
"Ohhhh," says human Claudia, finally understanding. "No, that's normal. Humans don't like being around other people when they're sick, it's supposed to be one of the major evolutionary advantages. Protect your community from your illness and the genes live on."
"So we're just going to leave him alone?" Dyos is troubled by this. He can go for weeks without speaking to another life form, but he has seen Ismail grow despondent when unable to participate in social gathering.
"Oh, no," human Claudia says, laughing. "We're going to employ one of the other most longstanding human evolutionary advantages."
There are many to choose from and Dyos settles on, "middle age?"
"Sort of," human Claudia opens up a small shipping container and holds up a brown paper bag tied with a colorful ribbon. It glows brightly in Dyos's vision, almost as brightly as human Claudia's smile. "His nanni's hot soup, express delivery."
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