Settling a dispute
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I want this job so bad. Do you know how much I know but never get asked about! I have to inflict it apon people to get it out ofy system.
New York Public Library! [video]
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This is the opposite outcome of one of my friends advisors. We went to the Roswell UFO museum as a lark. And one of the info panels said "this is potential alien metal panels, analyzed by a scientist, Dr. So and So" and we told the professor, who got really angry. "I said that I would look at what they had and it was all flattened pieces of beer cans, I told them not to associate me with this nonsense!"
So you're saying he did analyze the metals, and that he couldn't conclusively prove that they weren't alien metal?
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There were literally phone numbers you could call and someone at a library would look up the answer to your question. In like, a day or so. And call you back with the info.
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I'll allow it, because A. interesting. and B. I can use my preplanned response:
Can the trap be a glacier? I want future archeologists to dissect my corpse much like how Ötzi who was probably a metal shaman based off of his tools and how far travelled he was. Though he was most likely a very early example, also he was most likely murdered.
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I have a friend who works for a library. They still offer this service. I don't think anyone under the age of 70 has used it in some time.
Wow, seriously?
Imagine how many people actually call from a smartphone their kids bought them.
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So you're saying he did analyze the metals, and that he couldn't conclusively prove that they weren't alien metal?
wrote last edited by [email protected]This whole "it's comprised of an unknown element" thing that sci-fi likes to do is ridiculous in and of itself.
If aliens did turn up on Earth their starships would be constructed out of known materials, sure it might be some exotic alloy, or other engineered metamaterial, but we definitely understand what it was.
There's no such thing as alien atoms. Iron is iron.
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There were literally phone numbers you could call and someone at a library would look up the answer to your question. In like, a day or so. And call you back with the info.
There used to be an address at some university and you could mail them photographs of insects and they would tell you what those insects were.
Usually it would turn out to be a beetle of some kind.
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Oh wow, to be jump scared by the Destiel fanfic writer I'm obsessed with (the stories not the person lol) in the wild.
Northern Sparrow is an amazing writer and talks often about bird physiology in her fics!
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This whole "it's comprised of an unknown element" thing that sci-fi likes to do is ridiculous in and of itself.
If aliens did turn up on Earth their starships would be constructed out of known materials, sure it might be some exotic alloy, or other engineered metamaterial, but we definitely understand what it was.
There's no such thing as alien atoms. Iron is iron.
I'm still not convinced alien technologies would be totally incomprehensible to us. Some of it obviously will, but their tech will still adhere to basic fundamentals like levers, inclined planes, and wheels -- as well as fundamental forces like electromagnetism, kinetic energy, and pressure.
When you need to fasten two parts of machinery together, there are a limited number of efficient ways to do it. I fully expect bolts, nuts, and washers to be a universal technology. Same with focusing radiation; there are not many substitutes for lenses, mirrors, and lasers. When you need to move something around in gravity well, you're always going to need a wheel. If something needs to rotate, there aren't many substitutes for a rotor, stator, copper windings, and electricity. Gears, chains, and belts work just fine for transferring that rotational energy. Nobody is gonna go looking for exotic forces to perform tasks that can be far more easily accomplished conventionally.
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Oh wow, to be jump scared by the Destiel fanfic writer I'm obsessed with (the stories not the person lol) in the wild.
Northern Sparrow is an amazing writer and talks often about bird physiology in her fics!
well yeh it's fiction. because birds aren't real.
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I'm still not convinced alien technologies would be totally incomprehensible to us. Some of it obviously will, but their tech will still adhere to basic fundamentals like levers, inclined planes, and wheels -- as well as fundamental forces like electromagnetism, kinetic energy, and pressure.
When you need to fasten two parts of machinery together, there are a limited number of efficient ways to do it. I fully expect bolts, nuts, and washers to be a universal technology. Same with focusing radiation; there are not many substitutes for lenses, mirrors, and lasers. When you need to move something around in gravity well, you're always going to need a wheel. If something needs to rotate, there aren't many substitutes for a rotor, stator, copper windings, and electricity. Gears, chains, and belts work just fine for transferring that rotational energy. Nobody is gonna go looking for exotic forces to perform tasks that can be far more easily accomplished conventionally.
Not wheels. When your technology is sufficiently advanced you un-invent the wheel and just hover everywhere.
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Not wheels. When your technology is sufficiently advanced you un-invent the wheel and just hover everywhere.
I know right? Who needs fire anyway?
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Pfft, I bet you can't even tell me one interesting thing about minerals
Here's a cross-over mineral and biology:
Teeth are not bone. They are made of a variety of the mineral apatite called hydroxyapatite (fluoride treatment converts some of it into fluorapatite, which has stronger chemical bonds).
Further, apatite is a homophone for appetite but they come from completely different root words.
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This whole "it's comprised of an unknown element" thing that sci-fi likes to do is ridiculous in and of itself.
If aliens did turn up on Earth their starships would be constructed out of known materials, sure it might be some exotic alloy, or other engineered metamaterial, but we definitely understand what it was.
There's no such thing as alien atoms. Iron is iron.
I think the most crazy thing we could potentially encounter atomically (that we theorize about but haven't seen) is material from the possible "Island of stability" that could be (much) farther along in the periodic table from things we've created.
For the uninformed, the island of stability is a range on the periodic table with atomic numbers in the ~170's (currently the element with the highest atomic number - how many protons in the nucleus - that humans have synthesized is Oganesson, with an atomic number of 118) where it is believed that nuclei will remain (more?) stable, rather than breaking down in microseconds after we slam other elements into each other with devices such as the Large Hadron Collider.
There are SO many challenges with even getting to 118. Getting higher than that is theoretically possible but so far we haven't worked it out. A super advanced civilization might have the means and/or dedicated the resources, and be the beneficiary of whatever properties exist in the advanced/exotic matter that we know nothing about.
That being said, we would still be able to analyze the materials and understand what we're looking at, even if our WTF meters are breaking from the overload because we don't know how they managed to achieve it.
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I know right? Who needs fire anyway?
Replaced with plasma and lasers.
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Pre-smartphone was a very different time.
You would NOT believe-… ok honestly everybody reading this already knows.
But there are SO many people that will offer confident unprompted incorrect advice on so many subjects while they have the sum of human knowledge in their pocket. Or they will ask some dummy for the answer while having that same access.
And the best part is that many of them use their literal human knowledgebase portal to send the wrong information!
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well yeh it's fiction. because birds aren't real.
Fuck you too pal
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Part of our animal nature is to be tribalistic, and we don't often get a lot of that in our daily lives so that people find ways to feed that need. Tribalism involves violent intent about outgroups that don't conform to our "tribe" (read: pack).
wrote last edited by [email protected]Warning: Rant
There are two meanings to the word "Tribalism". One sense of the word just describes people living in tribes. The second meaning involves discriminatory behavior or attitudes towards out-groups, based on in-group loyalty.
There is a perhaps understandable tendency to conflate these two meanings. For one they are spelled and pronounced the same. We aren't really taught a lot about tribal cultures, and we just kind of assume things. Also our 'cultures' have been teaching us tribal people were savages and we did them a favor by conquering them.
I'm not claiming that they don't correlate to some extent. Of course you are going to have a preference for the people in your tribe over the people not in your tribe. You know those people, you are around them a lot and can personally vouch for their character. People not in your tribe are strangers and not immediately trusted. That much is true.
What I take issue with is the idea that Tribal people automatically hated anyone not in their tribe (out group) and had violent intent towards them. Also, equating being in a tribe and being in a pack is dehumanizing.
Yes, there was sometimes conflict with neighboring "Tribes", but for the most part tribes stuck to their own territory and didn't cause problems for other groups. Tribes often coexisted peacefully near each other for hundreds of years. This was advantageous in that it gave us trade partners and potentially ways to get new genes into the gene pool. Plus unnecessary fighting is just a good way to end up dead for no reason.
Typically tribal people settle on their territory pretty quickly and it's usually enough or more than enough to provide for the needs of the tribe- so there was little need to encroach on other peoples territory. Also when conflicts did arise, it very rarely escalated into 'Total War', where the goal was to kill/subjugate the members of the other tribe and take over their territory, because A) that's a good way to get a lot of your own people killed, and B) they had their own territory so they didn't need more.
Ironically, it was the invention of "modern" agriculture and "Civilization" that really kicked off the second type of tribalism. Modern (aka Totalitarian) style agriculture is extremely efficient. As such it nearly always produces a surplus of food (barring droughts, blights, and other natural disasters). When you introduce a surplus of food into a population- it has he effect that the population size increases along with it. Once you get more people than the land can support, then you do need more territory.
Another effect of 'Civilization' is that you see full time soldiers for the first time. In a tribe practicing subsistence living, your job would typically be something related to the daily survival of the tribe. Hunter, Gatherer, Cook, Crafts-person etc. If 'War' broke out then all of the able bodied Men and sometimes women would become 'Warriors' for the duration of the conflict. Again, since there was relatively little conflict there was no need to have people who were warriors exclusively (soldiers). With 'civilization' you can pay some people out of the surplus of food to guard the food.
So what happens when you are a large group of people, made powerful by the new technology and you find yourself in need of more land to farm? You take it- typically from the tribe next door. Only now the goal is 'Total War'. You want to kill or subjugate everyone in the territory you are tying to conquer. The problem is that they are human beings and you are human beings- so how do we get normal people to want to fight and kill their neighbors? The second form of Tribalism. That group is bad. They are uncultured swine. They are subhuman in some way because they are different. That's the kind of attitude you have to foster about other people to get your people to agree to conquer them.
Pretty much the entirety of human history sees the same scenario play out. 'Civilized' groups 'other' tribal people and systematically wipe them out and/or conquer them and appropriate their land. It wasn't until Europe/Asia had basically ran out of tribal people to conquer that nations started to go to war with each other.
The same thing happened with civilizations that arose in the New World, Mayans, Aztec's, Inca etc. It's no coincidence that these cultures relied heavily on agriculture.
What is my point? It's that 'Tribal' people are less 'tribal' than civilized people. It's the civilized people who are savage.
Why does this matter? We tend to forget that for the vast majority of human history we lived tribally. It's kind of easy to forget that because people didn't start recording history until right around the same time as civilizations were invented.
What am I trying to say? It's not "a part of our animal nature to be tribalistic", automatically hating anyone not in our in group and harboring violent intent about them.
Further evidence, look at modern attitudes towards tribalistic thinking. Despite living in the more savage mode of living- a large percentage of humans have woke up to the fact that tribalism is bad, short sighted, bigoted, and unfair. Take some very young children and put them in a playground together and they will play. They don't form little cliques based on superficial characteristics or 'culture'. We have to be taught to hate each other. We have to be told the reasons why it's ok to discriminate or subjugate others.
Tl:DR Nope. Respectfully of course.
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Replaced with plasma and lasers.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Humans harness fire now more than all of history combined. And fire is plasma.
I'm just saying, even the lowest tech has never really disappeared. We still use rocks and steam in our highest technologies. There's no reason to think aliens would abandon whatever tech has worked for eons.
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Not wheels. When your technology is sufficiently advanced you un-invent the wheel and just hover everywhere.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Its very important that they can only hover and not float or fly. If they could float or fly then you wouldn't be able to do cool car chases in a society without cars
