#Humans are space ants

[thatdense1]

I see humans are space orcs and I raise you, Humans are space ants.

Work in large groups to build seemingly impossible things, fight each other to the death, taking care of young is very important, and strong for our size. Additionally, we’d be tiny.

[carionto]

How to beat Deathworlders

I don't know what I want to write and it's a little frustrating. So, to fix that, I'm just gonna throw this at me - Giant Ant Planet

The first call to arms Humanity has declared. They mobilize with unseen speed and precision seven of their mightiest Dreadnoughts, hundreds of transports, and amass fifty thousand soldiers, fully armed and trained on the target.

They are headed to a world Humans scouted as having great potential for life to flourish. How correct they were.

In orbit above the planet Chromathium-2-4, the station Truncated Crescent Ellipses was tasked with conducting experiments to test the viability of Human-digestible flora and fauna living on Chromatoff (as the scientists began to call it for short).

When the fleet arrived, the final message from the station turned out to be true - it had crash landed on the surface. From the chaos of the recordings they received, there was a containment breach and the systems were under attack by some unknown electronic waves and incomprehensible code. A hostile act, but by who?

This was two weeks ago. Whoever it was, they would know the wrath of Humanity. Once we find your traces, there will be no hiding for long.

Preliminary scans show the station was dead and only local creatures and plants appeared, in greater density than elsewhere, but no matter. Just some animals.

The first unmanned craft landed and began exploring the wreckage. All of the digital systems were fried, not a hint of power remained anywhere. Attempts to manually power anything up proved fruitless - the data had been replaced with pure garbage code. Then, the drone vanished underground and went silent. Connection failure.

Orbital sights showed nothing, all frequencies were monitored and were free of unaccounted signals. The next group of drones descended and shortly after touchdown they too were seemingly devoured by the ground, all power and electronic signals cut.

A deep scan showed the same dense biological activity, but looking closer at the data it was like a carpet just below the actual surface layer. And for whatever reason the pulse couldn't penetrate below a few meters. Scanning areas further from the crash revealed a much more detailed and sparsely populated map going down the expected three kilometers.

For the third attempt they kept several drones above the landed ones at different altitudes. The moment the drones on the ground were vanished again, a sudden signal struck the ones floating up to seventy meters above and cut them off as well, but didn't seem to reach any beyond that. The visual was not as detailed as they'd like, but it was enough - the tips of large pincers and antennae and beady eyes. Ants.

The fleet maintained a perimeter around the entire system just in case, and spent half a day consulting professionals and former colleagues of the deceased scientists to get a better understanding of the current situation.

Two experiments the team had worked on before and supposedly continued when relocated to the new station stood out - metabolic acceleration, and unassisted neural interfacing via modified brain waves. Far from the wildest here, such as the self-relocating giant sequoia, but ones that offered a plausible explanation.

Ants serve a variety of critical functions in the maintenance of an ecosystem, so naturally they are a part of most late stage terraforming efforts.

Here, however, something went wrong and they evolved alongside technology at an intimate level. Perhaps deliberately made to do so.

They are spreading fast too. Twelve hours ago the "carpet" of underground ants was roughly two square kilometers. Now it was close to three and a half. In mere weeks they may spread across the entire continent, perhaps make it across (or below?) the seas somehow and ravenously consume all life on this planet before succumbing to extinction themselves.

This world is bountiful. Also, we're here already. Hmm...

Eh, may as well. Plenty of us have seen Starship Troopers and only joined to hopefully one day shoot at alien bugs. Guess these are more like home grown critters, but whatever.

With that brazen attitude (and a quick orbital bombardment) the troop ships landed, well, were forced to crash land the final few meters, but whatever electromagnetic warfare these ants were throwing our way didn't account for reinforced alloy armor and hand-held rail guns. Their sharp pincers, acid throwers, and thick carapaces did however.

Actually, fucking hell, they move real fast underground. Uhh...

This isn't looking so good in retrospect. Did they add cockroach DNA in these bastards too? Some of them literally don't care about losing their head, what the fuck!?

Okay, holy shit, abort mission! Good thing we still install regular ignition engines as an added redundancy to the military ships. Not very fast or efficient, but screw you, burn beneath the thrusters. BURN!

*deep breath*

Okay. So. We lost 831 soldiers, and 4625 are injured. And the ant casualties don't matter cuz they're ants. Super mutant ants. Who are going to take over the world if we don't nuke them. Which might not work anyway because HUMAN scientists made them.

Hoisted by our own petard or something.

Right, let's just chalk it up as a... military exercise gone wrong and quarantine the planet. Wait, make that the whole system.

...so this is what it must've felt like to lose the Emu War...

[sunderwight]

has anyone written a Loki series fic where Don the Jet Ski Salesman comes home one day to find his boys hiding something in the garage, and is tiredly like "is it snake? I better not go in there and find out you guys robbed a zoo--" only to open the garage door and see an injured, bewildered frost giant Loki prodding cautiously at a bag of doritos (the boys attempted to provide sustenance) (could be angst or good just be the version from the What If? episode trying to recover from a bender with Thor)

[waterfallofspace]

Hello! I see you’re pretty new to tumblr, so I hope it’s okay to reach out and ask. I’m thinking about making a sneeze blog too but really nervous. In the mean time though I’ve gotten into some of the popular fandoms like J/J/K and Tri/gun! If you have the time and wouldn’t mind, do you think you could also recommend some other blogs like yours?

Have a nice day!

Hi~! Of course that's okay, I'd be happy to help!!

For people who write J/JK and T/rigun, there's a few that spring to mind, here's some of my friends/favourites!! (I'll also add a couple others who are just overflowing with talent, tags under the cut!

(Hope y'all don't mind the tag <33)

@whispsofsmokee (amazing t/rigun fics) @snzdreams (some of the best j/jk content i've EVER read!) @onetrickponi (not J/JK or T/rigun, but poni is INCREDIBLY talented, like insane talent. you won't be disappointed with her stuff, even if you don't know the fandom~~ One of the blogs I'd consider a DEITY on here truly.) @goodlucksnez (Same as above fandom wise, but AMAZING wavs. incredible talent from Vic!!) @ezynse (t/rigun and other stuff, great content!!) @bestwhumpist (uh?? the talent dripping?? from this blog?? insane. some of the best fics i've ever read full stop, t/rigun included~~ if ur reading this hi ily ur amazing~) @gemsden (has some GREAT j/jk content!) @ithadtobesneezing (not the ones mentioned, but great fics!! so much talent) @themiseryandcompany (few j/jk fics I believe, also just good content!!) @lycheeehehe (not posting fics, but INCREDIBLE headcanons, and just reblogs a LOT of j/jk and t/rigun content!!) @6pmsoup (hasn't posted a lot, but the art skills are insane, and there's a REAL cute j/jk piece that i adore~) Aaaand hopefully from them you can find even more that I'm either forgetting or haven't even found yet!! These guys are also all INCREDIBLY sweet. I've made some amazing friends~ Being nervous is totally understandable~ I made this blog but didn't interact with ANYONE for like a year, but every person I've interacted with has been so kind and welcoming!! I'm still a little anxious wreck about reaching out, but so many people (myself included!!) love to talk and gush about our interests~~ Thank you for the ask, I hope this is helpful~!! Have a nice day as well :D

[basofy]

my friends are making fun of me rn for saying i like cockroaches so im going to post my favorite image

[pulchrasilva]

Most people trying to understand something which defies the laws of our universe: go insane from the incomprehensible horror of it

Mathematicians trying to understand something which defies the laws of our universe: I could describe rotations with this

[juice-from-17776-football]

.i am smiling so much thinking about humanity

[ssaltlicker]

Im in the club dissociating and having a severe mental breakdown because i thought about space too long

[qwuilleran]

Netanyahu: "[We are] doing everything- everything -to avoid civilian casualties"

Israeli army spokesman: "We are focused on infrastructure inside the [refugee] camp"

[a similar video from July 3rd]

The israeli occupation forces destroy the infrastructure and streets whilst raiding Jenin city (West Bank) 30.10.23

دمار كبير بالبنية التحتية وممتلكات الأهالي خلال العملية العسكرية المستمرة في جنين.

[falinscloaca]

god the arc in space was good

[cat-eye-nebula]

The unveiling of two non-human bodies at a UFO hearing before the Mexico Congress has generated worldwide interest. Hard evidence of a non-human civilization - Ant People/Aliens?

News media video: Alien Mummies in Mexico | Scientists Unveil 1000-Year-Old Corpses.

[batteryacidisedibleenough]

My favorite sci-fi thing I've ever thought of is something I'd like to call Humans Are Space Ants. Basically, humans enter the larger universe and find that all other intelligent life are practically gods. The thing is, though, humanity's exploitation of physics has gotten so out of hand that they are on equal footing.

Important to remember, the aliens are far, far beyond us. Their understanding of the universe is much deeper, their power is far greater, but we just fuck around with existence harder than any other being has the lack of sense to. And it has had extremely potent results.

Although humanity's standing up to a civilization of a billion literal Cthulus, they're winning. They will eventually codify eldritch knowledge in a way they can understand.

Imagine if ants developed music partly on accident by just doing math about it. You would be so confused as to how they even did that. But they did. And then the next time you go out into your yard you hear the objective single best piece of music you have ever heard, and it's about the ants asking you to stop poisoning their nests before they teleport into your brain and kill you. And they figured out how to teleport using the music. Somehow. Even ignoring the fact they can teleport with music, how could they have composed the greatest song to ever be? they don't even fullly get it!

Basically, eldritch gods watching humanity's bullshit with confounded outrage. I should probably write about this at some point, it seems pretty damn funny/cool

[bellflower-goat]

<:]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Marshmallow Longtermism

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this week!

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "Marshmallow Longtermism"; it's a reflection on how conservatives self-mythologize as the standards-bearers for deferred gratification and making hard trade-offs, but are utterly lacking in these traits when it comes to climate change and inequality:

https://locusmag.com/2024/09/cory-doctorow-marshmallow-longtermism/

Conservatives often root our societal ills in a childish impatience, and cast themselves as wise adults who understand that "you can't get something for nothing." Think here of the memes about lazy kids who would rather spend on avocado toast and fancy third-wave coffee rather than paying off their student loans. In this framing, poverty is a consequence of immaturity. To be a functional adult is to be sober in all things: not only does a grownup limit their intoxicant intake to head off hangovers, they also go to the gym to prevent future health problems, they save their discretionary income to cover a down-payment and student loans.

This isn't asceticism, though: it's a mature decision to delay gratification. Avocado toast is a reward for a life well-lived: once you've paid off your mortgage and put your kid through college, then you can have that oat-milk latte. This is just "sound reasoning": every day you fail to pay off your student loan represents another day of compounding interest. Pay off the loan first, and you'll save many avo toasts' worth of interest and your net toast consumption can go way, way up.

Cleaving the world into the patient (the mature, the adult, the wise) and the impatient (the childish, the foolish, the feckless) does important political work. It transforms every societal ill into a personal failing: the prisoner in the dock who stole to survive can be recast as a deficient whose partying on study-nights led to their failure to achieve the grades needed for a merit scholarship, a first-class degree, and a high-paying job.

Dividing the human race into "the wise" and "the foolish" forms an ethical basis for hierarchy. If some of us are born (or raised) for wisdom, then naturally those people should be in charge. Moreover, putting the innately foolish in charge is a recipe for disaster. The political scientist Corey Robin identifies this as the unifying belief common to every kind of conservativism: that some are born to rule, others are born to be ruled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/01/set-healthy-boundaries/#healthy-populism

This is why conservatives are so affronted by affirmative action, whose premise is that the absence of minorities in the halls of power stems from systemic bias. For conservatives, the fact that people like themselves are running things is evidence of their own virtue and suitability for rule. In conservative canon, the act of shunting aside members of dominant groups to make space for members of disfavored minorities isn't justice, it's dangerous "virtue signaling" that puts the childish and unfit in positions of authority.

Again, this does important political work. If you are ideologically committed to deregulation, and then a giant, deregulated sea-freighter crashes into a bridge, you can avoid any discussion of re-regulating the industry by insisting that we are living in a corrupted age where the unfit are unjustly elevated to positions of authority. That bridge wasn't killed by deregulation – it's demise is the fault of the DEI hire who captained the ship:

https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-dei-utah-lawmaker-phil-lyman-misinformation

The idea of a society made up of the patient and wise and the impatient and foolish is as old as Aesop's "The Ant and the Grasshopper," but it acquired a sheen of scientific legitimacy in 1970, with Walter Mischel's legendary "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

In this experiment, kids were left alone in a locked room with a single marshmallow, after being told that they would get two marshmallows in 15 minutes, but only if they waited until them to eat the marshmallow before them. Mischel followed these kids for decades, finding that the kids who delayed gratification and got that second marshmallow did better on every axis – educational attainment, employment, and income. Adult brain-scans of these subjects revealed structural differences between the patient and the impatient.

For many years, the Stanford Marshmallow experiment has been used to validate the cleavage of humanity in the patient and wise and impatient and foolish. Those brain scans were said to reveal the biological basis for thinking of humanity's innate rulers as a superior subspecies, hidden in plain sight, destined to rule.

Then came the "replication crisis," in which numerous bedrock psychological studies from the mid 20th century were re-run by scientists whose fresh vigor disproved and/or complicated the career-defining findings of the giants of behavioral "science." When researchers re-ran Mischel's tests, they discovered an important gloss to his findings. By questioning the kids who ate the marshmallows right away, rather than waiting to get two marshmallows, they discovered that these kids weren't impatient, they were rational.

The kids who ate the marshmallows were more likely to come from poorer households. These kids had repeatedly been disappointed by the adults in their lives, who routinely broke their promises to the kids. Sometimes, this was well-intentioned, as when an economically precarious parent promised a treat, only to come up short because of an unexpected bill. Sometimes, this was just callousness, as when teachers, social workers or other authority figures fobbed these kids off with promises they knew they couldn't keep.

The marshmallow-eating kids had rationally analyzed their previous experiences and were making a sound bet that a marshmallow on the plate now was worth more than a strange adult's promise of two marshmallows. The "patient" kids who waited for the second marshmallow weren't so much patient as they were trusting: they had grown up with parents who had the kind of financial cushion that let them follow through on their promises, and who had the kind of social power that convinced other adults – teachers, etc – to follow through on their promises to their kids.

Once you understand this, the lesson of the Marshmallow Experiment is inverted. The reason two marshmallow kids thrived is that they came from privileged backgrounds: their high grades were down to private tutors, not the choice to study rather than partying. Their plum jobs and high salaries came from university and family connections, not merit. Their brain differences were the result of a life free from the chronic, extreme stress that comes with poverty.

Post-replication crisis, the moral of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is that everyone experiences a mix of patience and impatience, but for the people born to privilege, the consequences of impatience are blunted and the rewards of patience are maximized.

Which explains a lot about how rich people actually behave. Take Charles Koch, who grew his father's coal empire a thousandfold by making long-term investments in automation. Koch is a vocal proponent of patience and long-term thinking, and is openly contemptuous of publicly traded companies because of the pressure from shareholders to give preference to short-term extraction over long-term planning. He's got a point.

Koch isn't just a fossil fuel baron, he's also a wildly successful ideologue. Koch is one of a handful of oligarchs who have transformed American politics by patiently investing in a kraken's worth of think tanks, universities, PACs, astroturf organizations, Star chambers and other world-girding tentacles. After decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, court-packing and propagandizing, the American billionaire class has seized control of the US and its institutions. Patience pays!

But Koch's longtermism is highly selective. Arguably, Charles Koch bears more personal responsibility for delaying action on the climate emergency than any other person, alive or dead. Addressing greenhouse gasses is the most grasshopper-and-the-ant-ass crisis of all. Every day we delayed doing something about this foreseeable, well-understood climate debt added sky-high compounding interest. In failing to act, we saved billions – but we stuck our future selves with trillions in debt for which no bankruptcy procedure exists.

By convincing us not to invest in retooling for renewables in order to make his billions, Koch was committing the sin of premature avocado toast, times a billion. His inability to defer gratification – which he imposed on the rest of us – means that we are likely to lose much of world's coastal cities (including the state of Florida), and will have to find trillions to cope with wildfires, zoonotic plagues, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

Koch isn't a serene Buddha whose ability to surf over his impetuous attachments qualifies him to make decisions for the rest of us. Rather, he – like everyone else – is a flawed vessel whose blind spots are just as stubborn as ours. But unlike a person whose lack of foresight leads to drug addiction and petty crimes to support their habit, Koch's flaws don't just hurt a few people, they hurt our entire species and the only planet that can support it.

The selective marshmallow patience of the rich creates problems beyond climate debt. Koch and his fellow oligarchs are, first and foremost, supporters of oligarchy, an intrinsically destabilizing political arrangement that actually threatens their fortunes. Policies that favor the wealthy are always seeking an equilibrium between instability and inequality: a rich person can either submit to having their money taxed away to build hospitals, roads and schools, or they can invest in building high walls and paying guards to keep the rest of us from building guillotines on their lawns.

Rich people gobble that marshmallow like there's no tomorrow (literally). They always overestimate how much bang they'll get for their guard-labor buck, and underestimate how determined the poors will get after watching their children die of starvation and preventable diseases.

All of us benefit from some kind of cushion from our bad judgment, but not too much. The problem isn't that wealthy people get to make a few poor choices without suffering brutal consequences – it's that they hoard this benefit. Most of us are one missed student debt payment away from penalties and interest that add twenty years to our loan, while Charles Koch can set the planet on fire and continue to act as though he was born with the special judgment that means he knows what's best for us.

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/04/deferred-gratification/#selective-foresight

Image: Mark S (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/markoz46/4864682934/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[kitkats-and-kittens]

Damian loves all animals.

ALL animals.

This is cute and funny when his siblings catch him playing fetch with Titus or snuggling on the couch with Alfred the cat.

It’s not so cute and funny when they find the big-as-fuck dragon bat that he found when he was like 7 and just claimed as his?!?!

Like how do you just get a dragon bat?

It’s even less funny when they find out about the actual 20ft dragon he decided to adopt and name fucking Wiggles. Like you can sit on that things nose. It towers over you?!? It could quite literally consume all 5 feet of you in one bite and you named it Wiggles?!?!

It’s even worse when they realise all animals includes bugs.

Idk Damian just gives of obssssed with bug vibes.

Like he owns several habitats filled with ants. Probably a giant ass spider that gets loose one day and causes a whole ass lockdown since Damian is the only one anyone trusts to not get eaten by it.

They can’t do missions in any sort of area that could potentially be the habitat of any kind of wild life without locking him down and preventing him from picking up some feral beast because it was quote on quote ‘friend shaped’.

The indomitable human spirit is just Damian’s ability to adopt the most unadoptable creatures on the planet. Honestly probably off the planet as well. God forbid that child ever finds some vaguely lonely space alien dog that seems to have zero friends in site cause it’s coming home with him.

Ik Alfred is tried.

[ioveiy]

can i just talk about the tiny plot throughout s2 of Woodsy keeping an eye on Harper & teaching her to drive??? it was just… SO needed and the storyline was handled appropriately and was fucking realistic but wholesome. Harper is so young to not have an adult to care for her, and as independent & brave as she is, it’s still something she needs and CRAVES.

the ENTIRE scene of Woodsy & Harper after Harper attacked Ant on the field during the game… just *chef’s kiss*

“You’re standing there telling me you’re all well and good but that girl I just saw on the field was carrying some pretty major rage.”

Harper, literally about to cry: “So?”

“So… I’m trying to help that girl, and she won’t let me.”

and for Harper to breakdown the way she did to Woodsy, an adult who, yes had checked in with her prior to this instance, but not exactly someone she had a close rapport with, simply an adult that was THERE and ASKING. “You really wanna help me? Give me some money so I can get some proper clothes to wear to this trial so I don’t look like a bag-of-shit victim. Or give me a car so I don’t have to catch two buses to get to my lawyer’s office. Or give me lawyers who don’t call me unsympathetic. Or get me a place to stay so I don’t have to occupy space at Amerie’s house. How does that sound?” (Also the FUCKING reality of these statements too just made Harper’s entire rant that much more raw).

and Woodsy just deciding in that moment that once Harper’s calmed down she’s gonna be like “alright kid I’m your principal so I can’t give you things but I WILL teach you things.” just wonderful

and then Woodsy’s excitement in the finale when Harper told her she got her license?? literally goes to hug her as if she’s her own child then dialing back because, yeah, still the principal & that’s not appropriate. realistic and human and written perfectly.