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ordei7 · 3 years ago

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I am here to ask about tardigrades

Ok I know you probably wanted some basic information on them (microscopic bear like things that can survive mostly anything including the dinosaur extinction and space) but I’m going to use this opportunity to do a biology rant, I apologize for your timing with this.

I just saw an article explaining how to best capitalize tardigrades by selling them as pets. First of all, these are microscopic beings, why would you possibly want them as a pet when you have to look through a microscope to even see them. Second of all, since when has it been ok to take wild animals directly from the wild, and sell them?? It’s one thing if it’s with strays or animals who would do better with someone caring for them, but with tardigrades they don’t need any help. These things were built to survive, I mean deepest parts of the ocean kind of survive, they survived the dinosaur extinction for fucks sake, which sure it wasn’t the largest extinction event on this planet (The Great Oxidation killed 99% of life on the planet, all of which was bacteria though) but it still took out, what? 70% of life? Tardigrades have been around for a long time and are very resilient, so why are we trying to domesticate them?? Is it just so people can make a profit all of them???

Which leads me to bioethics. While I’m using the term in its broadest definition, ethics concerning biological lifeforms, it generally does have a more specific usage. So in terms of bioethics I say it’s ok as long as it doesn’t directly or indirectly harm the animal(s). For example the glow in the dark rabbit genetic experiment. It (to my knowledge) did not directly harm the rabbit, they simply edited the dna in its skin cells to have bioluminescence, and being that it wasn’t going to be released back into the wild (it was a domesticated rabbit) the glow in the dark trait would not put it at risk in the wild. Another part of it is that the experiment was actually useful, they could take the shedded glow in the dark skin cells from the rabbit (and it’s children which it passed the trait onto) to keep track of the location of cancer cells in humans, making it easier for them to stop cancer before it begins.

On the flip side, the selective breeding of Belgian Blue Horns is something that I am against. They narrowed down their genetic traits until they got so much muscle that in some cases it’s difficult for them to even walk on their own, they certainly can’t breed on their own, they need human assistance with that. The only reason people have continued with this selective breeding over a period of 150 years is that the cows provide more meat, and thus gets the sellers more profit (not even going into how that can effect the cow overpopulation also caused by humans). Then there was the Firefly Axolotl experiment, which I won’t go overly into due to the fact that I am digressing, but in vague summary, the animals were harmed but with the purpose of an outcome that would help people without a motive of money.

So I got a bit off topic but you get my point hopefully, using animals for human gain (money specifically) and also harming them in the process you’d think would be a pretty big no ethics wise. But here we are, with ethics laws not applying whatsoever to microscopic animals. They got shot out of a gun to see what velocities they could survive (the direct quotes of “Tardigrade jam” and “shattering on impact” were used to describe the outcomes), and then they were also shot into space to see how long they could last up there without any life support (10 minutes). We wouldn’t be able to do this with any other animals, so why is it ok with tardigrades? And now we’re taking them from their natural habitats to sell as pets? Why?? So you can invite your friend over and be like ok look at the petri dish through the microscope to see the microscopic being that vibes there instead of the environment it was meant to vibe in???? And the fact that people are openly discussing it like there’s no issue with it as well, I mean there seemed to be general sentiment of not taking other wild animals from their habitats to keep as a pet or sell for a profit, so why does it not apply to tardigrades and other microscopic creatures?

I know a lot of people don’t actually know what tardigrades are, and are not well versed in biology or bioethics, but I still think that it’s something that should at least has room to be discussed. It’s obviously not a priority discussion either, with all of the other very important topics to be discussed/heard.

If you even read this far then…why, are you ok? That was like 5 long paragraphs of useless knowledge, why are you still here lmao

#korn speakeths #I know you probably weren’t expecting this long of an answer but I don’t think my friends can stand another rant like this #and you provided the perfect opportunity to unleash it onto tumblr #no I did not proof read this whatsoever #if you want to actually get some basic info on them you can search tardigrades on my blog and probably find some previous asks I’ve answered #biology #bioethics #genetic engineering #long post #tardigrades #water bears #moss piglets #firefly axolotls #genetic experiments #gun mention #tw gun mention #gun mention tw

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blueoatmeal · 5 years ago

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what do they eat????

the surface culture in KATAOW is Very Strange, and part of that strangeness is what people eat

when there was only one sapient species on the planet, humans, it was easy to draw the line between what was morally okay to eat and what wasn’t. broadly speaking, anyway. Don’t eat other humans; why? because they’re sapient. they’re people. just about everything else is fair game. humans will eat anything

not very complicated. and generally when humans thought about hypothetical other sapient species, whether they be mutants or aliens or whatever, they usually came to a similar conclusion: despite being a different species, the other sapients are still sapient, still people, and so would be off-limits, if they did exist. the What Measure is a Non Human trope does start to come into play here, because it is easier to question a being’s sapience if they are different from humans. But generally speaking, to humans, sapient = not a menu item

Here’s where things get complicated.

In KATAOW, humans are no longer the only sapient species on the planet. Far from it, in fact. I can name about thirteen just off the top of my head.

Now, if they were aliens, they’d have come from their own entirely separate ecosystem. Usually in media there is an unspoken “one sapient species per origin planet” rule. This rule is rarely broken. this wouldn’t be a problem, as long as all the sapient species agreed to not eat any other sapients. The more there are, the less likely this is to happen, but it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine, as humans usually do, that assuming the alien sapients have their own supporting ecosystems already, they could all agree not to eat each other, as a moral compromise if nothing else; a truce of sorts, a show of respect

Well. the new sapient species in KATAOW are not aliens.

They mutated, or evolved, from existing species in Earth’s ecosystem. In many cases (but not all) they seem to have entirely replaced their ancestors. For example, the Timbercats are the only example of modern ex-domesticated felines. There are no little kitties that can fit in a shoebox. None. None that we’ve seen, and Benson implies there aren’t any.

With birds, however, it’s different. We see examples of wild bird mutes (Beakbeak), and sapient bird mutes (Hummingbird Bombers). Is this distinction based on individual species? I don’t know.

In an inversion of the cat situation, the bunnies, or rather, megabunnies we see, are the only bunnies we see. But is it possible that there is now also a branched-off separate sapient species of bunny that we just haven’t met? I don’t know.

What causes some creatures to develop sentience, and others not to? They all seem to have changed in some way, but only some are intelligent now. Why? I don’t know. Humans seem to have, generally, been exempt from the mass mutation event. As we learn more about the world, this information may change, but this is what we know now.

Regardless, the fact remains that the creatures, the fauna of the world changed drastically, and with that change their needs changed too. Many plants and I would have to assume fungi and bacteria, archea, viruses, etc. have thankfully ALSO changed drastically. Is the ecosystem balanced, then, after such a drastic disruption? I’m not sure. The mutated life survived for 200 years though, so the environment coped well enough not to just kill everything, at least.

But still, food. Balanced or not, stuff definitely changed.

Let’s get the humans out of the way because they’re simpler:

Something happened to drive the humans underground, leaving a lot of food behind. They stay down there, so obviously they found ways to grow and hunt food down underground. If we can do it on Mars, a burrow is no problem. Humans were already eating whatever they wanted, so not much changed. And unless a lot has changed over 200 years, humans would still be averse to eating other sapient species. That’s been our history.

There are a few humans on the surface. Wolf implies that she won’t eat a mute if it’s sapient, when she first catches Mandu. Wolf and Benson seem to live off of old abandoned human food and non-sapient mutes. This works fine because there’s only a few surface humans; otherwise the supply of abandoned food would quickly run dry.

And that’s it for humans.

Non-sapient mutes will eat whatever, regardless of sapience. Beakbeak doesn’t care that his prey is intelligent. He’s an animal in the traditional sense of the word. Wild animals continue to be wild animals, just like before the mutation. Nothing new there.

But the sapient mutes? The sapient mutes are weird.

Just so we’re on the same page, here are a few sapient mutes we know:

The Mod Frogs, the Newton Wolves, the Hummingbird Bombers, the raccoons, the Dubstep Bees, the Scooter Skunks, the rats, some elephants, that waterbear/tardigrade guy, our insect bud Dave, the Snäkes, the Timbercats, Scarlemagne and his assorted primate gang, and those rodent ppl in Umlaut Valley--prairie dogs? Punk Prairie Dogs? Etc.

Quick note, there are a few that are questionable mostly for lack of information (Mandu, dragonflies, flies) and I’ll touch on them later. For now we’re working with indisputably fully-sapient mutes.

So.

Obviously their diets changed from their wild ancestors’, but I think we can assume that generally, their broad dietary range didn’t change. Strict herbivores are still built to handle plants only. There’s no reason their digestive systems and various feeding adaptations would have changed that drastically.

Herbivores? Probably mostly still herbivores. The Dubstep Bees seem to still rely on plant products, and don’t care for meat. Elephants are also obligate herbivores, and we see some with, what, some popcorn and cotton candy? That tracks.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll be glossing over the fact that most carnivores I know do occasionally eat a bit of plant and can thus be considered technical omnivores. That’s not relevant right now. There are plenty of plants and none of the plants are intelligent, so there isn’t an issue.

Omnivores need a bit of both. Raccoons, rats, and skunks are our best examples. They have plants, so that’s fine. There seems to be enough variety of non-sapient mute prey for them too. These mutes are urban too, so just as their ancestors did, they supplement their diets with human food. There is no need for them to eat sapient mutes, and as far as I can tell, they don’t. I’m pretty sure most primates fall under this category too. Insects vary, but Dave seems to be an omnivore. Wikipedia tells me tardigrades go here as well.

There are some animals that are generally herbivores but occasionally eat meat, like Hummingbirds, but again, there seems to be plenty to go around, and no reason for those few meaty meals to be sapient mutes.

Carnivores. Yeah. I’ve been waiting the whole essay to write this part. Who’s left? The Mod Frogs, the Newton Wolves, the Snäkes, and the Timbercats. If they can’t eat meat on the regular, they just can’t survive.

The Newton Wolves, Timbercats, and Snäkes express their willingness to eat humans. The Snäkes also are implied to be regularly eating sapient prairie dogs. The Newton Wolves are known to hunt and eat Mod Frogs and humans. These are all hard facts.

Little bit more speculative here: The Timbercats, like irl cats, would probably be more keen on eating Snäkes if they weren’t so venomous. I don’t think they’d be opposed to it though. The Snäkes are large enough that wolf could potentially be a menu option. Wolves have historically been known to eat cats and snakes, so their sapient counterparts are probably fair game too. I don’t think the cats would want to eat wolves, though that thought is based largely on size and the fact that irl domestic cats don’t hunt irl wolves. Could they? Sure. I just don’t think they’d go for it when there are other options. Likewise, various omnivores would be considered prey to various carnivores, with practical and historical considerations determining their exact place on the food chain. Snakes and cats regularly eat frogs irl, so that’s that on that.

You may have sussed out my main driving question by now, but before I get to that, let’s take a little detour: humans as prey

No animal specifically hunts humans in the wild. We are not the prime prey animal of any species. Well, besides some bacteria, and a few parasites, but until we see a sapient bacteria or tapeworm, that’s not relevant. But these new mutated species, much larger and more intelligent than their ancestors, seem to see humans as just another prey option. And rightfully so! We are bald primates, just clever little mammals. Heck, even the rats are bigger than us now! If a mute would eat a rat, how different would human be? Different shape, but otherwise? Not much! I’m just saying I get it. Humans have been established as equal to other sapient mutes, and susceptible to the organization of the food chain in a way we’ve never been before. We’re not special anymore. We’re not even in power! We’re in hiding!

Now I don’t know, but I have to imagine that the reason several sapient mutes are okay with eating other sapient mutes is twofold: history and demand.

All these animals were, before mutation, accustomed to eating beings on a similar intelligence level. That was their normal. So when a few of them mutate and gain sentience, what reason should they have to stop what they’ve been doing for all of history? Inter-species communication isn’t new, just easier.

And demand? Demand is more speculative. All of the mutes are much larger than their animal ancestors. So they need more food. If their main food source grew as well, and wasn’t sapient, there’s no issue... until you keep going down the food chain and run out of what they eat, and so on... But anyway, that could be alright. No moral issue, certainly. If their main food source stayed small (intelligent or not tbh), there’s going to be a food shortage for the predator.

This is all VERY simplified, btw, ecology is complex as hell and I could spend years mapping out all the causes and effects here

Back to the point: if there’s a food shortage, you either find a solution or die. Predators are probably gonna want to hunt prey of an appropriate size. So they either find different prey, change their preferences, adapt as many animals have had to do for ages. Difficult sometimes, and a hassle, but doable. OR... if their prey did grow, but also gained sapience? Screw the morals, which are historically more human-based anyway, and eat them. For both prey and predator, it’s not very different from what they’re used to. It’s not new.

Alright. That all makes sense to me. So what’s the problem? What’s that big question? I’ll tell you what’s been bugging me:

What the fuck are the Mod Frogs eating!?

“Well Blue,” you might say, “Just big insects and stuff, right? There are dragonflies and flies in the show. Why should the frogs be any different from the other predators in the show?”

They shouldn’t be any different, by the logic of this whole essay, but they are.

All the other animals, I’ve been able to find reasonable food sources for. But then the frogs subvert the whole thing by having dragonflies and flies working for them. The two most obvious and recognizable prey animals for frogs. So, are they in some kind of weird servant-prey Stockholm syndrome relationship?

Okay, possibly. I don’t have any data to disprove that. But it doesn’t fit with the rest of the kataow vibe and also I don’t like it. Like, the predator and prey stuff I can understand, but that is a special kind of fucked up, sapient or otherwise.

So if not that, then that’s gotta mean the frogs aren’t eating them, right? Okay, that makes some sense, I mean, they use the dragonflies for transportation and the flies are?? Also transportation????? Or assistants??? Its unclear. How that arrangement came about, I don’t know.

Are the flies and dragonflies sapient? I’m not certain. The flies wear suits, so that’s a point for Probably Sapient. The dragonflies are largely treated as non-sapient but intelligent animals, like a domesticated horse. So maybe they’re like Mandu? Only they can speak. Dave knows and speaks their language. You don’t say “oh I speak a little Horse, lemme talk to them.” That’s not a thing. So the dragonflies for now are Probably Sapient, But It’s Complicated

Alright, alright, enough of that nonsense, there are plenty of bugs! Large ones too! And small mammals, irl frogs will eat those too! If they can get it in their mouth and it’s an animal, an irl frog will be willing to try and eat it. There’s no problem! What’s the point of this! They just eat big bugs! Just not flies because they’re sapient and--

Ah. Aha. No; see, that’s just it. Because they’re sapient. But hang on, didn’t I just say I wasn’t sure about the flies’ sapience? Yeah, I did, and I also said they probably are sapient, and even if they’re not, I have more.

ALL of the obligate carnivores in kataow reacted to Kipo’s gang in the same way; “Oh, that’s food.” And then only later, even if just a minute later, and usually reluctantly, “But maybe friends instead?” All the obligate carnivores EXCEPT for the Mod Frogs.

“That’s because humans are too big and--” Bullshit. Humans are the perfect size for mute frog prey. Sorry, that’s just a fact. And not only that, but they treat Dave and Mandu the same as the humans. Why? Why? Dave is a freaking insect!!! And the perfect size!!! And Mandu would be a great snack! Wolf almost ate Mandu, and she’s got a strict “if it talks it’s not food” policy.

Alright so I don’t have an explanation for Mandu besides “their sapience is uncertain and maybe that’s enough.” Maybe they’re too focused on the humans? I don’t know.

But Dave?????? When they captured him with Benson in the beginning, why didn’t they at least threaten to eat him??? Huh?? My proposal: because he’s sapient.

...So ...what?

So, if we go with this logic, the Mod Frogs are the only carnivores who care AT ALL about sapience of their prey. The omnivores and herbivores have the privilege of way more options, so they don’t get an opinion.

Why do the Frogs care? Why? And why is it just them?

This is where I run out of answers.

And yeah, there are probably other sufficiently-sized non-sapient prey animals for the frogs. There was a big spider and that’s probably enough proof for that point. They’re fine. They have stuff to eat.

But that doesn’t take away the fact that while they seem to choose not to eat sapient animals, none of the other carnivores do.

Why.

Is.

That?

Jamack caught a Dubstep Bee in his mouth and what did he do?? He spit it out! Why would he do that if sapience wasn’t a factor? Why?

Seriously though if you have answers PLEASE share them with me, I am absolutely bewildered

#kataow #jamack #mod frogs #newton wolves #umlaut snakes #timbercats #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #kipo #dave kataow #analysis #biology #food chain #hunting #essay #meta #I got carried away....

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scifigeneration · 5 years ago

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Tardigrades: we're now polluting the moon with near indestructible little creatures

by Monica Grady

Dotted Yeti/Shutterstock

An Israeli spacecraft called Beresheet almost made it to the moon in April. It took a selfie with the lunar surface in the background, but then lost contact with Earth and presumably crashed onto the lunar surface. Now it’s been revealed that the mission was carrying a cargo of dehydrated microscopic lifeforms known as tardigrades.

Beresheet was the first stage of a privately-funded initiative to transfer living DNA to the moon. The project is designed to act as Noah’s Ark Mark II, providing a repository from which plants and animals could be regenerated to repopulate the Earth should a catastrophe akin to a flood of biblical proportions overtake the planet.

Whether the project is far-sighted or foolish, what has roused interest is the fact that, as a result of the crash, the tardigrades may now be scattered across the lunar surface. They are hardy creatures and could probably survive on the moon for a long time. Is this a matter of concern? I believe so, but possibly not for the reasons you might think.

Tardigrades are odd little creatures. Measuring up to about half a millimetre long, they have four pairs of stubby legs and a front-end that even the fondest parent couldn’t describe as beautiful. Striking, or distinctive, are my adjectives of choice. Moon-faced would be appropriate, given the context of the story – with a rounded, sucker-like structure in the centre that can project outwards, revealing a set of dangerous-looking sharp teeth.

They’re often called “water bears” but the images of tardigrades that I have seen remind me of a slightly over-inflated blimp, one of those large balloons that float overhead at carnivals. The legs stick out at a slight angle, as if they are too swollen to stand upright. And that is probably the clue as to why it is extremely unlikely that the creatures will survive indefinitely on the moon.

Thriving, not just surviving. 3DStock/Shutterstock

Tardigrades can survive extremes of temperature and pressure, including the frigid vacuum of space. They don’t seem to mind being exposed to radiation and are all-round tough little creatures. When dehydrated, they roll up into a spore-like state that slows down their metabolic rate by about a hundred-fold, enabling them to survive for potentially over 100 years.

But to live their life to the fullest requires water. It’s where they get their oxygen and food, typically colonising clumps of algae or burrowing into sediment to ingest nutrients from the fluid of other living creatures, even other tardigrades. So while the tardigrades will technically stay alive on the moon for some length of time in their rolled-up state, unless they are rescued, rehydrated and refuelled, they will eventually perish.

Interplanetary pollution

I’m not concerned about polluting the moon with organisms that might reanimate. My concern is about polluting the moon, full stop. There is already a fairly sizeable amount of debris from redundant spacecraft and litter left behind by astronauts. As more missions are planned to the moon, eventually with human passengers and perhaps even settlements, we must learn to clean up as we go along. Otherwise, we are going to have the sort of crisis that we are seeing on Earth with the outcry about environmental damage from plastics.

There is, though, another question to consider. What if the spacecraft had crashed as it approached Mars rather than the moon? The planet has had a poor record for successful landings, although it is much improved in the past decade. Would the tardigrades have survived atmospheric entry? Even though the atmosphere of Mars is thin, it still provides sufficient resistance to cause serious damage to the outer shell of an entry vehicle.

If they had survived, would they ultimately be any more successfully on Mars than on the moon? We know there is plenty of ice below the immediate surface across much of the planet. Would an impacting spacecraft transfer sufficient energy to melt a local region of ice? Could that meltwater survive without sublimating away or refreezing for long enough that the tardigrades rehydrate and wake up?

The surface of Mars should be kept pristine. NASA

I have no idea, but let’s speculate that the answer to the two questions is “yes”, and that following a crash, a flock (herd? shoal? pack?) of tardigrades reactivates. What happens next? As detailed above, tardigrades need water to survive, not just to rehydrate them. They live on fluids derived from other living beings. And, as far as we know, there are no living beings on Mars.

But we still keep sending spacecraft to look for life. Sending a cargo of tardigrades to Mars would be irresponsible, even if we don’t believe they would survive. Irresponsible because Mars has the potential for life. Restricted life, for sure, but we have no right to endanger that life. And we have a responsibility to maintain Mars as close to pristine as possible, exploring it with care.

That is why space agencies take such stringent precautions about spacecraft construction. The rooms in which the craft are built are cleaner and more sterile than any operating theatre. They take every precaution to ensure that no terrestrial life is transferred to Mars.

NASA and ESA are currently planning a mission to return samples from Mars to Earth. And precautions about the possibility of returning Martian life to Earth with the rocks are central to the design and build of the spacecraft.

Last week, we had an asteroid passing close to the Earth. Next week, maybe it will be killer bees. Or a plague of thieving magpies. But for now it is water bears on the moon. We should let them shrivel slowly into oblivion.

About The Author:

Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at The Open University

This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#science #science news #featured #space #Mars #Moon #tardigrade #space exploration

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the-heroic-changeling · 5 years ago

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Brendan: A Scene in Space

Hey it’s that rare moment where I’m posting one of my original pieces of fiction for the world to see. I wrote it just to practice, with the rules that it could not be more than a 1000 words, and had to be written in a day with minimum editing. No polish no drafts, just a quick little story.

As a synopsis, this is a small scene in the routine of a spaceship as it travels through space. It’s that simple. Tagging @neshtasplace @akirakan @majingojira @jogress @muceybbds @ayellowbirds @filipfatalattractionrblog @renaroo if you or anyone else who might be interested in this written equivalent of an artist’s sketch. So enjoy.

……………

All that could be seen through the camera was an inky blackness, only broken up with grains of light. Perhaps in the distance there were shadowed boulders hurtling through the gloom, but to Brendan’s camera nothing remotely drew close enough to be identified. It was just an emptiness, and Brendan was the world and all that existed.

Brendan was roughly thirty meters long, and their general shape was curved and bulbous like a teardrop. Their hull was smooth, with a number of small flaps extending from them. Some were rectangular panels, drawing reserve power from the radiance of the nearby star behind them. Others were mirrors, reflecting that limited light through glass windows in their hull. And others were nozzles, occasionally spewing bursts of compressed air, to push the ship through space.

Beneath the narrowest reaches of the teardrop’s hull was a small booster, currently silent. The rocket was not active, in this frictionless space Brendan’s momentum was already constant, there was no need for more speed. It was to be saved for emergencies, the nuclear engine of Brendan was unnecessary to keep their insides functioning and stable, the solar panels gained enough power.

As they drifted through space, Brendan monitored their journey through a multitude of cameras, six outside their hull, eight on their interior. Their cargo and passengers were incredibly heavy, Brendan’s creators had needed to use massive rocket boosters and fuel tanks to exit the atmosphere. But now that their momentum was achieved and they were in a state of zero gravity, Brendan no longer needed to consider their weight. And they would not need to for a few more millennia.

Brendan suddenly identified an issue on their sensors, algae had been building up on one of their net arms, and had just passed the threshold to clean. They immediately shuffled their arms around on their tracks, maneuvering a scrubber arm towards the offending limb.

Most of Brendan’s insides was a large pond of water, lit up by reflected sunlight and artificial lighting in an imitation of a day-night cycle. The pond was full of algae, both phytoplankton and more multicellular flora. Some species fed off the heat from the nuclear engine, rather than depending on the limited light. Swimming within the algae clumps was more animalistic plankton, along with three species of tardigrades. The tardigrades were the apex predators of the pond, feeding on both plankton that were animalistic and more plantlike. They had eight limbs ended in claws, simple eyes, a brain with multiple lobes, and one species was a whole millimeter long. They squirmed through the pond, their mouths shooting out to suck in more of their food. There were a total of twenty species in the twenty-by-five meter pool, a miniature ecosystem hurtling through the void.

Brendan slid the scrubber arm along the track, before lowering the limb down until it was nearly flat against their inner wall. They then pressed it to the coated arm, and began to rub with their rough appendage, scraping off bits and pieces of flora. The algae drifted loose as they cleaned one side of the arm, before sliding their arms around again to approach from a different angle.

Some of their arms had pincers, others had thinly braided nets, some just had cameras, Brendan had a large amount of tools to take care of their cargo. They were programmed to clean them long before the algae built-up enough to possibly limit movement on the tracks, not that they could think. They simply had a protocol that if algae built up to a certain degree on any of their limbs, that limb would require immediate scrubbing, permitting no greater priorities at the time.

As algae was dislodged and sent drifting through the pond, the flora brushed against a few tardigrades. They began to kick and maneuver through the water, scooping up the algae with their strange almost pulsating mouths. More animalistic plankton fed on the algae as well, only to be engulfed just the same by the larger animals.

Brendan meanwhile had slid the scrubber arm to face another part of the offending limb. They resumed scrubbing the offending appendage with renewed effort, cleaning off this side as well. Chunks of fibrous debris brushed off once more, as the tardigrades and other animals and plankton swarmed after them to feed. Brendan ignored them, while their safety was a high priority, they were unlikely to interfere with this task so there was no reason to focus on them.

While Brendan cleaned their limbs, one of its other net arms swung and scooped up a large piece of algae, about three centimeters long. Some tardigrades and plankton were take along with the motion, even as the arm tightened, sealing them inside. Brendan brought the arm around on its track, before flushing the net’s sample of pond-water into an airlock of sorts.

The scrubber slid around to clean the arm again, while Brendan multitasked, taking the sample for a routine study. Brendan could survey the pond itself, but periodically they would take samples for more in-depth study. Radiation levels were acceptable, the water would soon need more filtering though, given the large amount of excrement currently in the pond. The animals and plants seemed within the perimeters for good health, and it looked like one of the tardigrades was about ready to lay her eggs,

Brendan reconnected the sample to the lock, and expelled it back into the pond, the living things relatively none the worse for wear. At the same time the net arm was clean, and the scrubber had pulled away. And no asteroids or gravity wells were within a close enough distance to endanger Brendan and their cargo. Everything was currently stable.

So the space probe continued to traverse the void towards their destination. It would take millennia more until Brendan reached Hoddmímis, but they couldn’t comprehend that length of time, only compute it. And it was irrelevant besides power rationing.

#science fiction #short story #my art #tardigrades #robots #space travel

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transhumanitynet · 6 years ago

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You Could Be a Von Neuman Probe...

Seeing all this advanced nanite self-evolving technology all around us all the time has always bothered me a touch or at least kept me thinking about it now and then. It is sort of a break from my AI research work I suppose. I mean really, all around us are small microscopic machines, tiny mechanical computers using proteins to communicate to the various parts of the device with built-in algorithms around self-replication and evolution between generations. We see massive colonies of these nanites commonly referred to as trees everywhere. We are our selves are just nanite swarms… or rather we are an abstraction running on software running on electro biochemical massively multi dual processing supercomputer made of nanites that are highly specialized. To say ‘life’ as we colloquially call these out of control nanites implies something ‘magical’ which I argue ‘life’ is not magical. It is a form of very very advanced technology. Maybe we don’t understand it all the way but that doesn’t mean its not technology or is somehow ‘magical’.

I guess in physic’s I can’t get past this second law of thermodynamics around this idea that increasing complexity in a closed system can never happen. And if that’s the case, how did we get here given the universe is a closed system at some level? and this hogwash about complexity increasing in one spot if chaos increases in another spot that evolutionary biologist cling too just does not fly with me. The second law of thermodynamics is immutable unless proven otherwise. That gets us back to that question about how did we get here. Sure, we evolved but self-evolving nanite machines is not breaking the laws of physics in any way. But they don’t just ‘happen’ magically… I’m not saying there is a god or not but it seems likely that there is some intelligence out there and if you like you can call it god or a god but let’s focus on us now and here and what we can prove. For me, I must start with what I can prove and the 2nd law of thermodynamics is good and us being super advanced nanites that self evolve is all nice and provable.

In science fiction we have these ideas around probes and due to limitations in physics (such as the speed of light) of how you might explore the universe, one of the ideas is to send out massive numbers of super small ships sent out in every direction at or near the speed of light (the galactic speed limit) and these tiny probes build copies of themselves and repeat the process. These probes are called ‘Von Neuman’ probes after the guy that thought of them. Or well the part he thought about was just these self-replicating probes but this idea has been explored in detail in science fiction.

So lets just put this idea out there… what if ‘WE’ are the Von Neuman probes? what if we started off as a tiny collection of nanites in a tiny lander (like tardigrades and such that can handle space in real life) that was seeded to the earth. Over the eons, they evolve into intelligence enough to send radio signals so that everyone knows we are here and then we eventually replicate new probes and then the earth or any world doing this is ready for a more robust probe or colonization and thus the universe is explored? (you caught that about ‘this’ world being ready to colonize now right?)

Oh and let’s face it this idea of nanites and the grey goo scenario..? really any tiny machines like that are going to be fragile, there are power requirements and complexities and life as we know it is probably the best that can be done. Any nanites as we thinking of them colloquially, are going to be fragile, easily destroyed things that work in a narrow bandwidth of heat and other parameters. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure we can make them dangerous but it’s not going to be the grey goo science fiction imagines… just let me get my blow torch out and the nanites will be dead or you could freeze them or a nice EMP pulse would do the trick or we use one of these neutron bombs… I suspect would work great too. soooo just saying…

I’m not one to write science fiction much and given my research into AGI cognitive architectures I just need this out of my head so I can focus… that said I wrote this following story that sort of has three phases as a short science fiction story that sort of explains my vision for how YOU too might just be a Von Neuman probe…

The Archangel Micheal

Michael let the report flow around him. Usually boring and mundane it did remind him of today’s decisions looming ahead. It was time for him to get up and recharge for the day and go through his morning routine. Talk at work had been about the set of signals that had come from the probes. This meant they finally (again) had some worlds to go to, to expand to and grow too.

It had been a long time and Michael so loved the colonization of a new world. To bring it into the warm embrace of the Collection of Worlds. But colonization was a long process. Drawn out over eons or so it seemed. The latest wave had gone out so long ago but now the great colony ship was almost ready. They almost had a second colony ship ready too and there are 14 quantum gates ready to go with the ship. The gates would allow people to flow through to the new world and another great burst of expansion pushing back the chaos.

The process sort of worked like this. First with the great observatories strewn across numerous star systems to scan the heavens. Then to identify the new stars in new sectors and the ones with worlds that had the right set of resources for the Von Neuman probes that would be targeted in those areas. Then the millions of the small Von Neuman lightship probes would be scattered to the intergalactic winds towards the millions of new worlds that ‘might’ be right that had been identified. It was too costly from an energy standpoint to send a colony ship from world to world or star systems to star system especially not knowing up front which ones would work. So, goes the work the tiny Von Neuman probes which would arrive as a swarm across so many potential worlds with their self-replicating nanites, so fragile but so tenacious. Each world might only see one or two working probes but each probe had a few billion nanites but only a few types. The small computers in each nanite would use a number of complex algorithms to form increasing complex systems until they could mine the world create the resources needed for quick colonization and build new probes with the new infrastructure they had built and the cycle would renew across that region of space. We would know when a world is ready from the radio signals that would come. With their signals being like a massive flare guiding us and letting everyone know that a new world had emerged ready to colonize.

And now there were 12 such worlds in the new sector. It took a long time but 12 was enough to move forward. For most worlds the probes found, of course, it never worked out. Nanites are such fragile things. There was one strange anomaly which made them wait at least 100 years prior to counting a new star as ready where a lot of times we would get signals but within a hundred years or so there would be a gamma-ray burst and another massive amount of radio noise and it would stop suddenly before we even had gotten to the point of sending a ship. This tended to happen a lot and no one knew why. An eon ago or so an explorer ship had been sent to a few of these worlds that had snuffed out and they were found to be radioactive wastelands, where the nanite systems had blasted the surface of the world apart destroying most of what they had built. It seemed that on these worlds that we had explored after and an event like this, there would still be some groups of nanites struggling to rebuild but the system had collapsed, the infrastructure that they had built to transmit the signals were just destroyed and the resources corrupted. Thus far after millions of worlds, no such world recovered to the point of usability.

After millions of years, the next wave of signals had been detected from the Von Neuman probes. Signals from 12 worlds had been received in the past 1000 years or so and the High Collective was preparing the colonization plan. Normally a few more worlds would be detected in the process but 10 was enough so there were two to spare.

It’s not that getting there was out of reach just that each faster than light jump was expensive from an energy standpoint. And so, it was the way of things, waves of small nanite ships sent out, when they found a world they would replicate and send out new copies in that region and so far across the cosmos and with such worlds sending out new probes they were ready to be colonized at that point and thus grew the collective. Slow and steady through the eons of the universe.

The First World

The jump was complete and the mighty ship drifted silently in the darkness. A leviathan to progress. The great ship was like a cathedral to the might and eons of the collective. Michael gazed out over the prow which seems a horizon going out almost infinitely in every direction. The host star seeming to be a distant light coming up over the horizon of the prow almost a world unto itself. Then it hit the ship like nothing the ship and experienced. A wave of gamma rays that was not so unfamiliar as to not know the cause but its effect was like a dark shadow over the crew.

Michael in shock went to the projector and he descended through space to the world at the source of the gamma rays. And as Michael descend the pillar of light made by the type 1 nanites that carried him, he moved across the deep of the burned husk that was to be a new colony world. What caused the nanites to so frequently do this? It’s like the nanites would form groups and destroy each other. But nanites didn’t have the processing power to create intelligence, they were just so small and fairly simple.

Michael drifted in the darkness for a long time but eventually came to land. Gazing over a resource concentration that around the edges still had the nice resource piles organized randomly but with a strange order to them. Pillars of glass and steel and stone that stood around the gaping hole caused by small suns that had appeared in all or most such resource concentrations. It was so strange that these self-replicating nanites created order like this and then destroyed themselves. Michael bent down and ran his composite materials hand through the water in the bay in front of the destructions. Dead nanite slime clung to his hand. He knew that out there, there would still be some nanites left but there was no hope for this world… such a waste…

Then another light moved… a great noise from the horizon approached, small lights clung to the noise as it drifted over the burned-out resource collection site. Its self, a small collection of resources, some sort of machine created by the nanites but so primate. It has some concentration of glass up front and various random trinkets all over it but had a spinning set of swords where it literally beat the air into submission for locomotion. So primitive as to be laughable. None the less interesting as it spotted Michaels glow it behaved almost as if it was intelligent. Michael could hear its radio wave emissions change to something different but still random like all the radio noise created by nanite machines in this stage. Ready to harvest… but still, there was something Michael didn’t understand here. Michael could see what appeared to be two functioning nanite swarms shaped much like himself through the glass resource concentration in the front of the machine.

How strange almost like they were intelligent, hanging in the air through their primitive means… Michael wondered what if? But alas these nanites had killed themselves if not completely then soon with the radiation that soaked this burned out world.

The Second World

The jump was complete, the mighty ship again glided silently in the darkness. A behemoth temple to progress. The great ship was a cathedral to the might and eons of the collective or so Michael imagined. Michael gazed out again over the prow like so many other times before which seemed a horizon going out almost infinitely in every direction. The host star seeming to be a distant light coming up over the horizon with its rays of hope.

Michael considered as he glided down the hall, his crystalline mind almost shifting in its composite body. In the procedure room, Michael was about to turn off the nanites in this new star system and begin the colonization. Only a simple gamma-ray transmission and they would shut down and the colonization would begin. A thought came to mind, what if?

Michael decided to change his procedure and went to the projection hall to project himself down to the world waiting for his warm embrace and for its ascension for the Collection of Worlds. Michael descended as the same pillar of light created by his type 1 nanites. In many ways, they were super small versions of the machines created by the type 2 nanites that swarmed this world.

Michael had descended into an area a bit of a way away from any nanite concentration where the great piles of glass and steel reached for the stars, this was just the natural wild sort of state the nanites created in a few short millions of years. The intense greens of the solar collectors and an almost infinite variety said that this was a very mature set of nanites. Even this far from the collection sites the concentration of resources had started. Streams of the concentration of resources crisscrossed the landscape and sometimes a machine here or there moved along them. Then a most wondrous site, a concentration of high energy type 2 nanites came around the bend as Michael drifted through the solar collectors. This concentration was much his height and shaped very much like himself. Why was it they formed this particular shape? Of all the evolutionary paths the algorithms would design too, he was starting to see a pattern that always leads to this shape more or less. But the same one always like this seemed strange. Unlike most high energy nanite swarms this was the kind that concentrated the resources. The wet and primitive chemical goo light receptors of the swarm fixated on him. It, of course, was only a swarm of nanites so specialized as to not be able to function out of its swarm and so fragile as to die if torn asunder but it was like it had its own sort of intelligence that somehow had emerged. It didn’t move. Staring at him for the longest time then it emitted some strange vibrations and one of its primitive manipulator arms formed out of chemical goo and nanites reached out to touch Michael. In fear Michael commanded the great ship to turn the nanites off and in an instant it was like a new star in the sky and the swarm dropped to the ground and the green solar collectors turned brown and the world was ready for colonization.

please let me know any thoughts on the same… 😀

You Could Be a Von Neuman Probe… was originally published on transhumanity.net

#fiction #Metafiction #nanites #research #sciencefiction #space #Space travel #crosspost #transhuman #transhumanitynet #transhumanism #transhumanist #thetranshumanity

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ntrending · 5 years ago

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Tardigrades that crash-landed on the moon may still be alive, but they’re not having fun

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/tardigrades-that-crash-landed-on-the-moon-may-still-be-alive-but-theyre-not-having-fun/

Tardigrades that crash-landed on the moon may still be alive, but they’re not having fun

Have moss piglets conquered the moon? (Wikipedia/)

When Israel’s privately funded Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface on April 11, at least one component may have survived relatively unscathed—an archive of human culture built by the nonprofit Arch Mission Foundation to last for millions of years. The disk bore thousands of pages of etched microscopic text, as well as digital backups of English Wikipedia and tens of thousands of culturally relevant books. It also carried bits of Earth’s biological heritage, Wired reports, including preserved hair follicles of the archive’s engineering team and thousands of the tiny and nigh invincible animals called tardigrades.

Knowing that the infamously rugged creatures could survive punishing temperatures and even the vacuum of space, Arch Mission Foundation co-founder and chairman Nova Spivack couldn’t help but wonder how the microscopic creatures had fared. Had he incidentally seeded the moon with life? Researchers say while the lunar environment is largely inhospitable even to tardigrades, some might indeed have survived the crash—but that doesn’t mean the moon is home to life as we know it.

“I don’t know if we can talk about ‘surviving’ in this case, because these tardigrades are in a stage where they are not formally alive,” says Mats Harms-Ringdahl, a professor emeritus at the University of Stockholm who has sent the animals into space before. “They may have the capacity to come back to life, so to speak.”

Also known as “water bears” and, somehow even more delightfully, “moss piglets,” tardigrades usually like it wet. Many species swim in lakes and oceans, but others have evolved the ability to survive on land. (with a low-powered microscope, you could almost certainly find some in your nearest park or garden, hiding in mosses or lichens). When water is plentiful they eat, have sex, and lay eggs, but when hard times come they dry into inert husks of their former selves, known (adorably) as “tuns.”

Any species can die of dehydration and shrivel up, but what makes tardigrades special is that they can often reverse their mummified state, plumping right back up with a mere squirt of water. This ability to return from the brink of death positions tardigrade tuns as the animal kingdom’s top survivalists, and research has shown they can rejuvenate even after experiencing triple digit negative temperatures and pressures found only miles underwater. Researchers wetting historical moss and lichen samples have brought back tuns that were nine years old, and frozen moss samples have survived without food or water for up to 30.

With skills like those, the tuns that Beresheet brought to the moon—some wrapped in tape and others preserved in amber-like resin embedded in the archive’s disk—may very well have made it to the surface physically intact, as long as the crash didn’t get too hot. As indestructible as they are, Harms-Ringdahl says, temperatures nearing 200 degrees Fahrenheit can damage their proteins and turn their long nap into an eternal slumber.

But even the moss piglets that remain in a reversible state of suspended animation may not be long for their new world. Harms-Ringdahl, who studies radiation biology, was involved with a European mission in 2007 that identified the tardigrades’ elusive kryptonite—space sunlight. Without lunar inhabitants on hand to quickly revive them, these space explorers risk receiving a hefty dose of the stuff.

The European team launched dozens of tardigrades into low earth orbit, where the critters spent ten days outside of the satellite that carried them. Some bore the full brunt of the space environment, while others sat behind a sunglass-like shield blocking ultraviolet rays (but letting cosmic radiation through). Back on Earth, the tuns from the shaded group revived just as well as those who stayed home, but almost all the sunbathing tuns remained permanently dead. The sensitivity to sunlight doesn’t bode well for any tardigrades who might be lying on the lunar surface. “Even DNA is sensitive to UV light,” Harms-Ringdahl says, “and this is the toughest kind of UV light, because there is no atmosphere.”

Lunar days and nights last for two weeks, so the Beresheet remnants have probably gotten plenty of sunshine in the five months since crashing. But the tuns may still stand a chance… if they happened to settle beneath a layer of lunar dust.

“If the animals are directly exposed to the full spectrum of UV light they will be dead within days, with no ability to return to an active state,” says Ingemar Jönsson, a professor at the Kristianstad University in Sweden and leader of the 2007 tardigrade-in-space research. “But if they are buried in the ground where the temperature is below zero they could probably survive quite long, perhaps for some years.”

The ultimate question is the state of the archive these tardigrades call home. At launch, the resin that surrounds them was sandwiched between 25 layers of reflective nickel, and the whole disk was hidden away behind many layers of metallic heat shielding and other reflective materials, according to Spivack. That sort of cool, shady environment could keep the tuns quite safe. Any damage suffered during the crash, however, would raise the creatures’ risk of exposure to heat and ultraviolet light. Only future lunar visitors will be able to say for sure.

Space is a nasty place for unshielded organisms, and there’s no shame if the water bears did succumb to the fierce UV rays of space—not even hardy bacterial spores can take prolonged exposure. But if the Arch Mission Foundation is interested in planting life on the moon, they might consider expanding their candidate pool. At least one lifeform can withstand unfiltered sunlight in open space, and it’s one the tardigrade knows quite intimately. Next time, they should include a lichen.

Written By Charlie Wood

#Science

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placetobenation · 5 years ago

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Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or, occasionally, profound.

RIP Toni Morrison, a true literary giant.

Bagpipe music is enchanting and wonderful, especially when you understand that its true purpose is to call from hilltop to hilltop and inspire people to fight the British. The attached jam session featuring Latvian bagpipers and Mongolian throat singers is fascinating, and also slaps so hard.

An excavation of a Roman-era settlement in London has revealed souvenir gift pens that say, essentially, “I went to Rome and all I got you was this pen“. People have always been people, and kitsch gifts have apparently always been kitsch gifts.

AT&T employees made over a million dollars in bribes for planting malware on the company’s network. In case my employer is watching, I of course would NEVER do such a thing, no siree.

“Gender reveal” parties are of course binarist nonsense, since more and more of us should know by now that it’s specious at best to assume a correlation between the shape of a fetus and the gender of the person it may become. (They’ll tell you eventually, chill. If you want to have two baby showers, just throw more parties.) It’s a slight delight, then, to see that the trendsetter who inadvertently popularized the gender reveal hullabaloo is actually the parent of a super stylish, gender-nonconforming child.

This Week in Video Games: Diablo is now available as shareware playable in your browser. Have at it!

Whooooa, that’s a double eclipse all the way. Double eclipse, oh my god. Whoa, that’s so intense. It’s so beautiful! What does it mean??

Often, technical processes that seem opaque to users are actually built on a house of cards that’s been treated like a game of Jenga for years and years. Thus do you wind up with things like the bank marketing email subscription that involves your unsubscribe request being passed from London to Hyderabad to Scotland to Swindon, back to you, then back to Swindon and back to Hyderabad. With steps run manually by humans at every turn. To unsubscribe from an email list.

There’s been renewed furor lately about the various ways that the companies running food delivery apps — and indeed the restaurants themselves — skim off of drivers’ and servers’ tips. Long story short, tip generously but do it with cash. One way that people are pushing back on behalf of the workers is a class-action lawsuit filed against DoorDash by Alan Arkin(!) and others who were deceived about how their tips were being used.

3D printing may be going to space. The first time I read this article it didn’t make much sense to me because you’d have to use a boatload of fuel to hoist the printer into orbit along with the raw material it’s going to be printing with, but they’re using it to make 32-foot-long beams for solar arrays, which unlike most components, you can’t just make on the ground and jam into one of the few manned space-worthy vehicles we have left.

This Week in Ethnic Cleansing: A pregnant Mexican woman suffering potentially serious complications only mananged to move her asylum claim forward and go to a hospital because she happened to be escorted by a US Senator and his staff. I’m sure Ron Wyden and some of his colleagues would love to personally escort every asylum applicant out of the concentration camps if they could, but that hardly seems more practical than just shuttering the camps and welcoming our new neighbors.

Is it time for the caps lock to die? It may very well be, but I’m resolutely unconvinced that any of the proposed alternatives would be a better option to hit accidentaLLY ALL THE TIME.

Earlier this year, the Beresheet lunar lander crashed into the moon. Now we’ve learned that in crashing, the lander seeded the moon with dehydrated tardigrades, part of an archive lobbed up onto the moon by one of those deranged vulture capitalists who suddenly turn into private space magnates after amassing a ton of money.

(Warning: domestic terrorism, bigotry, slurs, edgelordery) Conservative scolds have tried to spin last weekend’s mass shooting in El Paso into yet another conversation about “violence in video games,” as if they haven’t been smashing that dead horse into paste since the Atari 2600 and Dungeons & Dragons nearly took down all societies in the global north. If you want to talk about games, there’s always the gamification of terror on sites like 8chan, where folks yuk it up about the Christchurch shooter’s “high score.”

#IFTTT #Place to Be Nation

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magneticiris · 7 years ago

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Discovery Episode 10 Thoughts/Reaction

Obviously spoilers

- Title/premise-wise, it reminds me of "despite everything, it's still you". I want that to be true. I want the series to end with something akin to "where I am, I choose to be", because none of them really have been at this point. You have the researcher thrust into battle, the kid who's been shunted around from one culture to another all her life, and the guy straight up tortured to the point of having no control of his reactions. Also Saru, who's basically in constant fight-or-flight mode. Only Tilly knows what she wants, basically, which is what makes her such a sweetheart. And maybe Lorca, depending on what's going on with that dude.

- Yellow alert? You'd think another universe would be red alert, but I guess Lorca's too chill for that.

- Oh shit, Saru's ganglia and the stress clicks as soon as Tyler entered. Raising some death flags?

- Seriously, why are there no seatbelts on this thing. Or padding, to stop people braining themselves on the consoles. It is insane. Stamets nearly broke his damn skull, which would have cut short all their research.

- What the hell. There's a Discovery there? With a spore drive? So does that mean Stamets always sacrifices himself, or is there like an army of tardigrades/people in there as disposable fuel? I hope the latter, because that's messed up in the best way.

- Haha, Lorca's accent is getting a little thick. "*extreme lorca voice*: gentlemen, ah love war"

- Aw, Tilly. OMG, I want to hug her so bad. AW. Poor thing. I hope there's fanfic where Stamets sits down and apologises to Tilly for being such a dick to her, because he's honestly like that with everyone and my heart just kind of broke into pieces.

- To the palace? So he's out of the woods now, getting closer to here, maybe? Hm.

- Aw, Culber is so sweet... and so salty towards Lorca, lol. "Speak of the devil", dang.

- OH FUCK. Suddenly Lorca goes from possibly good guy to straight up fucking evil. Motherfucker needs to get decked. I mean, he has a point, but the idiot should have thought of that before he drove Stamets into a fucking catatonic state.

- I guess this is him feeling guilty about it and blaming their relationship as reason this wasn't found out earlier, but it's still shitty as hell to bring it up now. Glad they didn't shunt Culber off screen though, that'd tick me off.

- UH. Why would they send the dude ostensibly suffering from severe PTSD in to a war zone. How could Burnham have let him? I mean, I know they have other things on their mind, but still. It's not just endangering him, it's endangering everyone around him.

- What is with Lorca pulling this "I know about your relationships" bullshit now of all moments. I do get that it's guilt, but it's really undermining his whole "I care about my crew" thing. Love is important, especially in the midst of a crisis like this.

- Poor Tyler. He really was Voq. But he isn't any more? He's what she turned him into as a cover? I really hope they're not two separate people, because that's no fun. I'm invested in the idea that the torture got his wires crossed and he really thinks he is Tyler.

- I do love the idea that he wants to be Tyler so much it's overwritten his programming. Like, if Voq is a different person, it ruins the whole thing where he wanted to be part of something greater. Unless he's been staring through Tyler's eyes, maybe?

- Burnham is so pretty. i'm gay

- Aw, I like the idea that this other universe has an alliance. Like, a second of hope for this universe.

- Aw, Stamets being missing is killing me a bit, too. I miss his barely-existent eyebrows, which gave life to every scene. Bless Anthony Rapp.

- I hope this version of Tilly is Captain, because otherwise they need to explain why not. It’d be like not having the tardigrade return in terms of missed opportunities.

- Aw, so Voq's going to see what fascism looks like from the outside. I love this angle, and I'm glad it's the humans who are space Nazis after all. I was worried that they were going that route with the Klingons as well as having them be tribal, which is a whole boatload of problematic racial subtext, but they've mostly dodged that bullet.

- Oh shit, they switched places. There's an evil Discovery out there causing havoc.

- HAHAHAHAHA. YES. CAPTAIN TILLY. This gives me hope for a lot of plot threads this season, you have no idea. Also, I love the visual motif that straight hair is conformity and being crushed by the system, while natural hair is being yourself. They started that with Burnham's Vulcan bowlcut, so I love it here.

- Oh my god, Tilly is an absolute treasure. I love her trying to act tough.

- HAHAHA Lorca’s Scottish accent. No wonder his Southern accent got a little thicker.How does he know how to do that at the drop of a hat?

- Poor Tilly, she has to learn how to be cutthroat. She's clearly never had to find that part of herself before.

- help. Tilly's nicknames. Killy. I love that her evil self is clearly going to be known as Killy until the end of time now, because that nickname is just as goofy as the real Tilly. So wonderful.

- Huh. Lorca murdered her?

- Aw, Lorca had my thought. Maybe you are a better person, dude. Maybe you're secretly an antifa idealist who wanted to destroy the empire.Anything’s still possible at this point.

- Destiny? Lorca really knows how to spin some bullshit when he has to, considering he's the one orchestrating everyone's destiny. Also, is that why he messes around with fortune cookies?

- I hope they run into their "dead" selves at some point.

- Love Saru being horrified by their plan. Especially since he's basically just had confirmation that humans are a terrible predatory species. More so than usual, in this universe. I hope he meets up with other alien races or gets something to do here.

- Aw, Culber. I know it'll end up okay, but it's killing me.

- is he seeing the future? Considering the mention of an emperor, the palace thing seems relevant.

- AW, this is heartbreaking. OH god, for two seconds he seemed back.

- Terrans don't apologise? Dang, I would make a useless Terran, then.

- Their strength is in survival. Yes, necessity. Tell the world that fascists are really scared little bigots who think everyone is as horrible and deceptive as they are. Although, in having to survive here and now, they're going to have to become like them. Which is why I hope mirror Lorca was antifa, because it'd make a nice counterpoint. He's almost been forged into one of them by whatever gave him those scars.Or he is one of them. Either way.

- AW, Burnham and Tilly. They're so great, and Tilly is such a goof.

- HAHAHA I love Killy so much. She's so OTT.

- Oh shit, it's that poor kid from the med bay. Well, the brig, but he thought it was the med bay.

- Killy is too much, it's delightful. I love them all trying to act over the top, it's killing me. Also, her asymmetric RPG hair is wonderful.

- His personality could be written over this? "You're not you" Personality doesn't equal soul, though. Really hoping he's not being taken over, and that he's just super confused. If they make Voq just an evil invader, I'll be kind of mad.

- Whoa. I like that it didn't linger, though. I don't think I could bear that kind of fetishisation of his death.So Stamets is going to need to pull a deus ex machina of some kind, I guess.

- "The enemy is here."

- Lorca really fucked up in that regard. They had almost too much faith in him, to the point where he had to actively undermine it this episode. I do hope he's good, though, because the twist being "Lorca's evil" seems kind of boring.

- Unless he and mirror Burnham somehow worked out that they needed to disband the empire, and she sacrificed herself to send him to the other universe? That’d explain why he’s so desperate to keep her alive and happy. I hope that’s it, if they go that route. It’d also explain why he thinks her destiny is for something greater.

- Man, Burnham is so good at this. I guess she's already kind of lost everything, so she knows how to harness that strength in absolute terror.

- Agoniser booth? Dang.

- FUCK. Did he kill the entire crew? OH. She has to kill that poor kid from the med bay. For a second there, I thought they were going with the kid being as cartoonishly evil as Captain "cut out your tongue to lick my boots" Killy.

- I mean, obviously it's not the same person as Connor, but still. In the circumstances, they could have become these people. Either they'd be dead, or they'd have lived long enough to become cartoonish villains.

- Oh god, the applause.

- So Voq is somewhere in Tyler's body. Ugh.

- God, everyone's so broken now. Even the hearts of the show, Tilly and Culber, are both compromised. Tilly maybe not as obviously so, but she's just had her dream shattered a bit and is stuck acting evil. This is the darkest quarter, right before everyone gets built back up... hopefully.

- AW. Tyler is so doomed. I hope Voq is seeing through his eyes and understands, if they are going that disappointing route. I really want them to be one and the same,

- So, was Lorca being an asshole to Culber earlier mostly to justify his being tortured? Because I see him in pain and I'm just like "yeah, you kind of deserve that, mate".

#discovery spoilers

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contentsharing0 · 7 years ago

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‘Star Trek: Discovery’ needs to find its moral heart

After episode 4, I’m no longer sure that Discovery‘s heart is in the right place.

War and moral ambiguity are nothing new to Star Trek, but Discovery is unnecessarily cold and brutal. No one in the U.S.S. Discovery’s crew seems to like each other, and the show gives no screentime to the casual side of their lives. It forgets that no matter how grim the setting, life still goes on. What do these characters do for fun? What are their relationships? Why does Tilly and Burnham’s bedroom look like a featureless prison cell? Following the plot-heavy introduction of the first three episodes, we need more downtime to relax into these characters.

Photo via Star Trek: Discovery/CBS

In the lead up to Discovery’s premiere, I often thought about the unspoken contract between fans and creators of a long-running franchise. People have certain expectations for something like Star Trek, but after 50 years, you can’t just repeat what came before. A new show must forge ahead, building fresh material around the heart of what makes Star Trek work.

Discovery made excellent choices with its casting, production values, and overall concept. It just doesn’t fill Star Trek’s cultural niche because it increasingly appears to be a show about miserable people being unpleasant. Even during the darkest periods of Deep Space 9 and Voyager, the main characters still shared the frivolity and warmth of day-to-day life. Discovery needs this. It needs to find an appropriate equivalent to The Next Generation’s poker games or Voyager’s silly holodeck adventures—not to replace its core story about the Klingon war, but to balance out the tension.

Instead of seeing Michael Burnham emerge from her loneliness and guilt, she’s sinking further into a pit of troubling moral decisions. This week, she received her first proper assignment from Captain Lorca. Her job was to experiment on the monster (“Ripper”) they captured on the U.S.S. Glenn, and figure out how to weaponize it. She quickly realized it was actually a herbivorous tardigrade with a symbiotic link to Stamets’ fungus spores, making it much more useful than a weapon. After plugging Ripper into the fungus-based stardrive, they were able to save a civilian base from Klingon attack. Then instead of setting Ripper free in the fungus forest, they locked it back inside Lorca’s creepy lab.

By dropping a cast of scientists into an unexpected war, Discovery created an interesting conflict for Starfleet’s core values. Characters like Burnham and Georgiou believe deeply in the Federation’s diplomatic ethos, while Lorca is a warrior. He transformed a scientific research vessel into a battleship, forcing his crew to obey ruthless orders that Kirk or Picard would never give. It’s a thoughtfully complex scenario, with one key problem: Our heroes fail to rebel. There’s no sense of moral unity against Lorca’s cruelty, and this episode supported his belief that ends justify the means.

Photo via Star Trek: Discovery/CBS

I suspect Burnham will free Ripper eventually, but this week she just watched it suffer in quiet sorrow. We don’t even see a full reaction from Saru, who must sympathize as a sensitive, herbivorous “prey” alien himself. He and Burnham are now in the distasteful position of “just following orders” from a bully. Even if they’re unwilling to disobey a direct order, they should at least voice their objections to Lorca’s methods—or work together to find a better way.

We actually see more friendship onboard the Klingon ship, where the outcast Voq has built a religion around his dead mentor, T’Kuvma. Set apart from the less idealistic Klingons, Voq bonded with his right-hand woman L’Rell (Mary Chieffo), hampered slightly by their rather immobile facial prosthetics. (I’m very much enjoying the poetic, formal speech patterns of the Klingon subtitles, but if their faces can’t move, the actors should probably introduce some more body language.)

Without sounding too much like a stuck record, it’s troubling to see Burnham be so isolated compared to her Klingon counterparts. While L’Rell abandoned her post to join Voq in exile, Burnham spent most of her time with the antagonistic Commander Landry. They represent a classic conflict between open-ended research (Burnham) and a desire for actionable results (Landry), with Landry dying a hubristic death at the claws of the tardigrade. It’s hard to see why she had to die at all. An injury would serve the same narrative purpose, and her death confirms an unfortunate trend. Three prominent characters have died so far—Georgiou, T’Kuvma, and Landry—and all were played by people of color.

Burnham sympathizes with the tardigrade, a lonely creature that was judged by a single violent action. Yet at the end of the episode, Burnham locks Ripper back in its cage. This lack of self-confidence makes sense, yet it’s also unsustainable in the long term. We need to see more moral certainty from Burnham and more warmth from her crewmates, and it needs to happen fast. I’d be more forgiving if it was a 20-episode season, but we only have four to go before the mid-season hiatus.

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