Another humans are weird space orcs idea because I really like thinking about it. What if aliens have no idea how to hide their emotions? Like, they suck at poker because they can never keep a straight face or anything. or, on a darker note, their ship is hijacked and they can’t keep the fear out of their faces, but all the humans look cold and emotionless to them. Other aliens hating having to bargain with humans becase we can bluff and keep our emotions in check so well, but when they get frustrated it’s all over. Pirates threaten the space ship and they send the human to do negotiations, and the pirate talking is super confused because no matter what threat he makes, the human just doesn’t seem to be fazed one bit.
Someone please, feel free to add to this, I love to see what else people come up with!
Okay, but now I’m thinking about how this ability is used in the context of animal training/hostage negotiation/teaching/customer service. Not just looking stone-faced, but completely lying with affect, body-language and vocal tone to seem calm, friendly, relaxed and in control of the situation in order to build rapport with an animal or person and to de-escalate aggression in a situation.
Proximity alarms start going off. A vessel is approaching.
Camilian: <looks at viewscreen> “Oh zark it, it’s the Parg.”
Camilian: <shudders>: “The Parg. Remember the civilisations living on those five planets Lei-ward of Helios 6?”
Human: “No? I thought that system was empty of sentient life.”
Camilian: “Exactly.”
Human: “…ah.” <looks at flashing lights on console> “They appear to be hailing us.”
<Camilian and Egrat scuttle backwards away from console.>
Human: “…thanks a bunch, guys.” <presses hail pick-up button> “This is Communications Officer Haley Makini of the Starboat Fribling, how may I help you?”
Parg ship: “This is Zek of Parg.”
Human: “Hello Zek! How are you feeling this day-cycle?”
Parg Ship: “…”
Human: “I for one have been missing my family lately, I got a vidcall from my little sister and my cousins - same-generation kin-people - and they told me that cousin Wendy is getting married to her girlfriend Mila, isn’t that nice? So I’m really hoping I can make it to the wedding - that’s romantic lifebond ceremony - because otherwise they’d all be sad, they told me so. Do you have any family - lifemates or brood or other kin-people back in your home-system Zek?”
Parg Ship: “…Zek of Parg has brood of five. All Smallings, but soon Biglings. Soon.”
Human: “Oh! You must be so proud of them!”
Parg Ship: “… Yah. Good future replacements for Parent-bodies for Glory of Parg.”
Human: “And that’s all any of us could want! Imagine how sad our kin would be if either of us were to fail to make it back home! That’s why I want to help your ship Zek, in any way we can. The Fribling is only a small ship, but we have some surplus goods and skills to offer if you need anything from us.”
<long pause>
<No one on board the Fribling speaks, but Egrat has anxiously chewed their claws to the quick>
Parg Ship: “Have Lucrum cable? Parg Ship underengine in poor condition, jury-rig not hold, need hitch-tow to Dellar System.”
Human: “Oh, that’s only 8 parsecs away. Sure, hah, we can manage that. No problem.”
<78 minutes later, after the two ships have been attached via Lucrum cable>
Parg Ship: “…What kind you?”
Human: “Huh? ….oh, I’m a human. I’m from Sol 3, Earth.”
<Human sinks to ground, hand on chest, hyperventilating slightly>
Human: “HolyfuckhowdidIpullthatoffohholyfuck!”
Camilian: “Wait, you were scared too?”
Human: <glaring> “Cam, we’ve worked together how long? I’d have thought that by now you’d trust my threat assessment abilities. Phew! That one was so close I felt the breeze going past.”
Egrat: “…how. How did you just do that?”
Human: “It’s not hard. Stay calm, just keep smiling, and build rapport by pretending to care about their problems, and meanwhile showing that you’re a real thinking being. Tends to defuse situations rather than escalate them.”
Egrat: “…I think I saw what you did, but where did you learn how to do that?”
Human: “5 years customer service experience.”
oh my god I love this so much
imagine the cognitive dissonance that could be caused by overhearing a human ranting about their job, or partner, or parent… “ARGH they NEVER listen, I swear it makes me want to grab them by the neck and just… just… GRAAAAHHHHH!!!” *heartfelt strangling and/or punching pantomime*
and then mom calls 5 minutes later and the human runs to the bridge to take the call, and suddenly they smile and say, “oh hi, mom! yeah I was just talking about you, how’s it going back home?” and there’s a little sarcasm, but by the end of the conversation they’re laughing and smiling and end with “okay, love you! can’t wait to see you on my next shore leave, kiss mama from me, bye!” without a single death threat and apparently completely sincere in their smile as they say “wow, that was a great convo, I’m so glad she called!”
… poor aliens, they’d just be so confused
#but I thought you wanted to terminate the lifeforce of your progenitor?#and now you are planning to return home for the feasting celebration of Thanksgiving?#without bloodshed?#Human Steve we do not understand
Trump’s tax plan, if passed, will strangle the government down to the point where services and social safety net programs would no longer be able to be funded. It’s no surprise that Trump’s tax plan reduces his personal taxes and the taxes of big businesses. This will probably spark a recession, or possibly cause the next global great depression.
“God would never put a female soul in a male body because He never makes mistakes” Excuse me? God literally was so embarrassed by his human creations that he destroyed the entire earth in a flood leaving only one guy’s family and a bunch of animals stuck on a boat together. “God never makes mistakes” What on earth are you t a l k i n g about???
the story of noah is literally god going “fuck this i’m starting over”
“Um this place is being to toxic uwuwu im remaking”
Wasnt there also a story of god killing this dudes family and farm animals or something to teach him a lesson?
Teach him a lesson? More like win a bet with Satan.
okay time for everybody to pull out their receipts on god
My girl spoke nothing but fucking TRUTH. Now that’s this kind of Women we need our girls to look up too.
Who is she?
Sarah Kendzior.
She’s an expert in authoritarianism and has accurately predicted almost everything that is happening - her unflinching insight and analysis is terrifying but invaluable right now. Well worth following on twitter.
fucking
why did i never see this until now
I love that she barely even opened her eyes to look at those men. She said allat with a veil of “stfu I’m so done” over her face, it was incredible.
At a news conference on Wednesday, news anchor Kelly Wright spoke to reporters about the second lawsuit lodged against Fox News this year for racial discrimination. As the only black anchor on Fox, Wright can be a more public face for the accusations, as the suit filed in March pertained to discrimination in the…
concept: soundproof rooms where you go to scream. $5 an hour. they pay you.
Monsters Inc honestly could’ve just paid college kids to do this instead of exploiting the labor of young children… the real monster is the lack of ethical business practices…
There’s probably some monster equivalent of a climate scientist that’s been pushing for ethically sourced scream from secretly monster-run amusement parks, haunted houses and spooky holiday festivals for decades, only to be constantly rebuffed and painted as an alarmist nut.
Scientists Politely Remind Monster World That Ethical Screams Ready To Go Whenever
A changeling is a creature found in folklore and folk religion. A changeling child was believed to be a fairy child that had been left in place of a human child stolen by the fairies.
A silly little comic I wanted to do in my spare time about a changeling child dropped off but the fairies forgot to do the actual swapping part.
it occasionally occurs to me that pretty much all sj issues can be summed up as “don’t hurt people” with a sidenote of “you can hurt people on accident, but they’re still hurt so apologize and learn from it”
basically at the core of it, it’s similar to “if you bump into a stranger, apologize and try not to do it again”. And people not only debate it, but some go out of their way to bump into strangers and scream “Awww are you hurt?! are you crying!! did I upset you!!” as a weird hobby
also true of like 90% of what gets called “political correctness”
there is a difference between language that sugarcoats and language that is specifically designed to not hurt groups of people who are targeted all the time
knowingly using words that hurt them isn’t edgy, it’s mean
Honestly, I'm confused about the OP's "ask" here. Does sexism only exist when someone expresses it? Does the person who's being sexist in response to someone saying sexism is bad exist in a Schrodinger-like quantum-state, where they are neither sexist nor not sexist, until they encounter someone who doesn't like sexism, and THEN they become sexist?
Y'all say anything to take away my credibility lol
"Surprisingly," they've started feeding on each other.
Jesse Watters, a leering sock puppet crafted in the back room of an MRA conference, is slowly finding his sea legs now that his mentor Bill O’Reilly was pushed out in a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. Unfortunately, like a game of whack-a-mole, there is always another creepy idiot at Fox News standing in the…
I'm lucky, the boyfriend and I divide things pretty evenly. I like vacuuming, so I do that. I detest dishes slightly less than he does, so I do that. We don't want to eat poison, so I cook. I'm deathly allergic to dust, so he does that. I hate dealing with the trash beyond putting things in the container, so he does that. We don't want to die in a fiery crash, so he does car maintenance. We even split the cats evenly; if it comes out of their mouths, he deals with it, I get the other end.
It’s just common sense that in order to keep peace in your household, chores should be split evenly between the people who live there. Whether you share chores with roommates, a partner, or both, this two prong approach will get them to do more chores without a fight.
“Men in nursing have earned more than women — $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals — pretty consistently for the last 25 years. That’s according to a new study of 290,000 nurses that controlled for age, race, marital status, and children in the home.
The New York Times considers some of the factors that may explain this gap:
The study did not address reasons underpinning the persistent gap. There could be several reasons, Dr. Muench said: Men may be better negotiators, for instance, or perhaps women more often leave the work force to raise children. Women may have a tougher time getting promoted, she said.
“A workplace may offer a bit more to the men in order to diversify,” said Diana Mason, a professor of nursing at Hunter College of The City University of New York and former editor of The American Journal of Nursing.
Still, it is possible that women earn less because of a “lingering bias that a man is more of an expert because he’s a man,” she said.
Everyone seems pretty shocked at these findings, as if the fact that women still make up the majority of nurses automatically means they’ve got some advantage. But previous research has revealed that as men enter traditionally female-dominated professions, they tend to earn more and get promoted faster. Similar gender pay gaps have been shown among administrative assistants, teachers, and even babysitters.”
Her friend is arguing the old myth that women get paid less because they work in different areas within the same field, like instead of doctors they become nurses.
But when you compare wages WITHIN an industry, with the same title, role and experience level, the gap is still there. Forget doctors - male NURSES make more than female nurses in 18 out of 19 categories!
Sunday is "Adopt a Shelter Pet Day" (aka the greatest day of the year). [ more › ]
