#humans are inefficient

[inbabylontheywept]

Soviet Birds.

The secret facility that I work in has holes in the ceiling. We don't know how to get them fixed.

We tried asking the government to fix it, once. We told them that the holes in the older parts of the facility had gotten large enough to fit birds through, and that birds were getting through, and that, perhaps, a Soviet Spy could fit through as well.

After all, it is well known that Soviet Spies and pigeons are approximately the same diameter.

Our hope was that that this vague and nonsensical threat would put a little fire under Uncle Sam's feet. If the fed couldn't be bothered to give a shit about the giant gaping holes in the roof of our facility, perhaps they could be persuaded to give a shit about... Soviet Spies.

This attempt at manipulation 100% blew up in our faces.

See, the government does not need to be persuaded to give a shit about Soviet Spies. It still wakes up most nights, drenched in cold sweat, terrified and confident that a Soviet Spy is hiding in their nightstand. If it sees a rock on the ground, it flips it over, pistol drawn, ready to shoot the Soviet Spy it fully expects to slither out from underneath. Which is to say: The government is crazy. So when we dropped those two words - inflitration risk - in the repair request, they came in guns-a-blazin'.

Does that mean that they fixed the roof? Of course not. Don't be stupid. No, instead of performing basic maintenance, they installed a state of the art alarm system throughout the facility - lasers, sonar, the works - and told us to always be on the guard. Because of the roof holes.

Then they left.

So now we had an extremely good alarm system... and birds. Which have combined in incredibly obvious and predictable ways to produce an unending fountain of problems.

For Example: About once a month, someone gets called in by the local airforce dispatch because AAAAAAAAAAA a Spy is in the Rad Lab! We're all gonna die! Except every time, it's a bird. And I get why we have to check, but every time, the dispatcher is panicked and the person going out has to be like listen, listen: It's a bird. It's always a bird. It's been a bird every month for the last fifteen years. It will be a bird next month. All this stress? Bad for your heart.

Second Example: Sometimes, birds get in while we're actually working. And when it's in the morning, you know, it's a nuisance, and it stops testing (we are not going to risk irradiating a bird) but it's not an all-hands-on-deck situation because it doesn't take ten hours to get a bird out. But surprisingly often, the bird gets in riiiiight at closing time, and in that situation, everyone goes feral because nobody can leave until the alarm is set, and we cannot set the alarm while the bird is there, because the bird would immediately trigger it and then we'd have to stay another 4 hours to confirm that it was not a Soviet Bird.

So in order to go home, everyone's top priority is Get That Bird. And we have a system for it.

Step 1: The test stands tend to be located in rooms with 30+ foot ceilings. We can't catch birds in places like that - so we have to lure the bird into the relatively low ceilinged (8 feet only) upper offices.

We do this by turning all the lights off in the test rooms, then putting floodlights by the exits. I don't know why this works - some kind of evolutionary brain fragment shared by both Bugs and Birds - but work it does. The birds almost always follow after the lights. From there, it’s just two guys moving the floodlight and a third guy to turn off the lights.

Step 2: Everyone else has been waiting for this step. There is this long stairway up from the basement level into the offices, and in the final stage, the floodlights are brought to the base of the stairwell to bring the bird up. At the top of the steps there will be a group of tennish people, waiting for the signal. The light guys will set up the final transfer, everyone will tense, and then, swish...a bird will flit up the stairs and into the offices.

It's like watching werewolves on a full moon. Before the bird cometh, we are engineers. Nerds. Pale and skinny things, trembling under the fluorescent lights. After the bird, we are beasts. Feral, gnawing things, glowing under the orange sunrise of the 70's halogen floodlights.

And like all beasts, we cannot help but give chase.

Step 3: The were-engineers begin the hunt. The goal at the start is not really to catch the bird - just exhaust it. So the pack simply does not relent. Because the stakes are going home on time, the group is basically given free reign to go anywhere in the building. If someone's door is open, and the bird goes inside, they're going to have to deal with ten sweaty panting maniacs leaping around their office. They don't get to say that they're busy, or remark on how all this movement is a terrible distraction. They are allowed to sit in silence during the chaos, and perhaps thank the war party for chasing the bird while they sat comfortably on their ass. This has been explained several times, and it will continue to be explained until cooperation is achieved.

Anyway.

The chase can go on for quite some time. Sometimes, the bird will get tired and find a crevice to hide in, where it can then be reached through standard cornered-bird catching techniques.

Other times, it will slow down enough that someone can actually yoink it out of the air. But this will go on until someone catches the bird and triggers Step 4.

Step 4: The Finale. This is the get-the-bird-out-of-the-building stage, and it requires someone to adopt a specific role: To Become the Sacrificial Vessel of Bird Removal.

This job is both coveted and feared. It's coveted, because holding a wild bird in one's hands is a precious thing. To feel how small, and fragile, and scared it is, only to free it from the building? That is what it's like to be a benevolent God. But the cost! Oh, the cost. The entire time the Vessel is in motion, the bird will be biting the hell out of their fingers. And I cannot emphasize enough just how painful bird bites are. Their entire face is a set of needle posed pliers, and they know tricks the even the cartels haven't figured out yet. So there's always a little hubbub about who shall be The Vessel while onlookers, stranded outside The Office of Bird Capture, can only look on. Quiet arguments and pleas are heard, little fragments of fear and pride and glory trickling out of room like the silver dust left behind in a bag of well shook quarters. The sound of concensus is silence, and the argument will go on until that's all that's left. And then, from the darkness of the final office, the chosen sacrifice will step forward: Hands gently cupped, tears streaming down their face, fingers trembling from the pain of the ongoing bird chomps.

And this scene is what organizes people. Not leadership, not truly. No one can think and coordinate a crowd while their fingers are being attacked with a combination nutcracker/ear piercer. But the crowd sees the suffering of their annointed, and it is driven to do everything poossible to make the process flow. People instinctively flair out, finding the fastest path outside. Doors are held open. Paths are cleared. Someone, somehow, always knows the way forward and can describe it to the sufferer. Left, left, forward. Corner closet. Yep, there's a hall in there. Forward. Two-hundred more feet man, you're doing great. Just hold it together a little longer. You're killing it.

Then the final door swings open, and the bird flees out into what remains of daylight. And yet, even here, the deed is not yet done. I cannot explain it in words, but the crowd that helped is never content until they can see and speak on the Bird Vessel's wounds. They all have to pull the fingers back and see what was given. Estimate the price: One day to get better - No, three - No, a week! Are you blind? Do you see that blood blister? -Yeah, that's not going away anytime soon - Damn, can you believe how feisty those things are? Like wolves without teeth.

(They cannot help but touch as they go. It has always been this way. Even Thomas was not content until he felt the wounds in Christ's hands.)

Only when the last of the helpers has seen, and commented, and commended, will the engineers scatter. It is their return from the underworld that announces to the sun living surface dwellers that they too can go home. (@somerunner tolja it needed to be a post.)

[ace-of-drakes]

i absolutely despise the fact that humans aren’t telepathic like bitch what the fuck do you mean i can’t project this very specific feeling directly into your soul and i have to use words to communicate

[forevermore-quoth-the-kitten]

strong urge to write an Obey Me fic where MC figured out really fast human fascinate demons for many reasons and gets a Devilhub account. they're really popular on it really fast. but the thing is

they're just doing normal shit and chatting about what life is like in the human realm

and demons go wild for it

[sharowolet]

mood for the week

[ID: digital drawing of a rowlet popsicle but it’s one of those scuffed ice creams you get from the neighborhood ice cream truck. Its eyes are off-center and horribly askew. Its mouth is above its eyes. Everything about it is melting. ]

[victoriadallonfan]

Victoria acting like Driving a car is some kind of weird cultural thing, because she always flew around is so great.

Victoria: "Did you know that apparently texting and driving is dangerous? Driving is so bizarre!" Taylor: "...You don't say..."

[mylastmoleculeofserotonin]

I think I’ve finally put my finger on the reason why I (and people in general) love to watch “kids’ shows” when they are older teens and adults: because empathy and love, especially platonic love, are arguably humans’ most valuable trait and yet, in our society and in “realistic” media is treated as a weakness or at least at odds with being successful. Like, empathy isn’t even unique to humans, it’s found in and is integral to so many species of animals (and maybe even plants too!!), especially what we consider to be some of the most fearsome predators like lions and wolves. But humans have have “gone all in on” empathy and the capacity to form bonds with other humans, even outside familial circles, which is the reason we outlived the homo erectus which lived at the same time as humans since we were able to form larger communities. And all that’s to say that seeing shows where moral goodness is synonymous with empathy and friendship and wins the day is probably very satisfying for our brains since we don’t often see empathy treated as the essential part of us that it is.

That’s why shows like Hilda or Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts are my personal favorites because the main characters’ defining trait is being empathetic and is, at least in the beginning, their only way of avoiding trouble. And these shows in particular feature the main characters advancing the plot and achieving heroic feats through simply talking it out and generally being a kind and helpful person. When I first watched these shows I, admittedly, saw such events as cheesy, but when I took time to think about it, it not only makes sense why it worked, but was quite literally the best possible way to fix the problem at hand because empathy is a very natural thing for humans and is literally how we have become the apex species so of course it can work when someone gives it a chance.

It’s human nature to be kind and empathetic and is why it’s so satisfying to see it spotlit in kids shows.

[mage-ical-character-person]

the cinematic parallels are stored in the gender I guess.

they’re just. Yknow. Androidgynous.

[dollerinna]

You are the savior us starving Noir fans have been missing and I hope you know that 🥹

If you need any ideas maybe a nsfw alphabet?

SAVIOR??? STAWP IT 😭😭💗💗 but it do be true tho, we are suffering from a drought of black noir content here ((which is absolutely criminal if you ask me 😤

And I think I could do a NSFW alphabet! I never done one before but it shouldn’t be too hard, so thanks for the awesome suggestion anon :D

[drumlincountry]

Do you have any idea what its like to be a sustainable agriculture girlie with a hatred of permaculture. Do you have any idea how much I suffer every day.

[arysthaeniru]

"This language of work was by no means the private language of a single-minded maniac who had lived too long under the volcano. To the contrary, Hill’s ideas were on the leading edge of the terrain where biological science and social science intersected. In particular, the concept of the calorie, as a measure of both energy consumed and work done, emerged in connection with the steam-engine-based economics of work in mid-nineteenth century Europe. By the turn of the twentieth century, the calorie had developed into a unit of equivalency between what people ate and how much work they could generate, what they needed to consume and what they were capable of producing—effectively recasting the body as a measurable machine.Whether or not Hill had a formal grasp of the field of expert knowledge cohering around the calorie and its implications for labor management and social policy, he did understand it implicitly, for he paid his employees in food. He used the way of seeing the relation of food and work that gained expression in the science of the calorie in his campaign to reduce the people who worked on his plantations to mechanisms of value production—to make them his."

Augustine Sedgewick - Against Flows

(emphasis mine)

[this-is-a-nice-show]

It does kill me a little bit that the character who claims not to read picked a 100% human name, but the character who owns a bookshop and works in customer service didn't.

[toytulini]

really irritating that the avenue of communication i keep open bc i pay the phone bill keeps using it to inundate me with fucking Ads?

[ashanimus]

It is so god damn frustrating to live in a world where constant potentially interesting articles are shoved in your face and all are behind a paywall. Like I can get around them or whatever it just is weird and irritating like now my landing page isnt a bunch of stuff that's curated for me to read its just targeted ads, but the ads in this case are ads for information on topics i give a shit to read about

[m-ercutios]

why are you expecting people to spontaneously get over their instinctive fear responses as if we’re not ultimately the culmination of our prior experiences

[bethecrayon]

I know I'm not the first person to pose this nor will I be the last but I don't like how round everything in computer life has gotten. Let me have a box with a sharp edge! A square button! Stop rounding out icons and pretending that it's the peak of quality of life updates!

[planetamarte]

oh god. art block but only about drawing human people