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#carionto
carionto · 7 months
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Humans really like space wildlife
As Humanity integrates itself within the Galactic Coalition ever further, trade and travel between Sol and neighboring member systems is growing at exponential rates. In particular, their interest in the native wildlife of other planets is the most widely expanding sector for tourism and commerce.
Even though it is also the most heavily regulated and restricted one, Humans, who typically display a desire to subvert the normal procedures to expedite any process they can, for this they are surprisingly willing and eager to fill in all the necessary paperwork and spend hours upon days making sure they follow and adhere to all the requirements to import some of these creatures.
While such level of determination is not uncommon for new member species who discover a certain non-native creature or something that to the respective natives is commonplace but for them is the pinnacle of exotic, the variety of requests made by Humans is nearly as great as the entire list of known fauna species. And the reasons listed on the forms are even more diverse:
"That's a unicorn! I've always dreamed of having a unicorn and you're telling me there's a dozen subspecies?! Yes, please!!!"
"After reviewing their behavior, this bear-sized fluff-ball is the perfect cat I've always wanted, but couldn't because of allergies. I'll treat them with love and care, my life is incomplete without this fella."
"Tiny. Elephant-duck. Want."
"Our company was looking for a mascot, and these six-legged spindly beaver-crabs are perfect. Here's our mission statement and prepared accommodations for a flock."
"They all said I hallucinated the lizard sasquatch when I was on that acid trip, but now I'll show 'em. It's real. I knew it all along!"
"Aww, these baby puppies are so adorable (referring to the four meter, 800kg Fanged Widowmaker of Abyss Valley predator). My kids were looking through your alien picture books and instantly fell in love with these ones."
And so on. At first we had to reject quite a few, mainly because half of them were deadly beasts from Deathworlds that are almost impossible to capture in the first place. Then the Human officials informed us that, while they will try to stop it from happening, if we don't make importing and adopting even the most dangerous animals in the known Galaxy reasonably possible for them with Human help and expertise in the field, some Humans will set up illegal smuggling rings to "fill the market gap" as they said. Historically, they explained, that causes more problems and expenses than just handling it through official channels.
Reluctantly we were persuaded and have set up a new organization to quell this, apparently, unquenchable Human pack bonding condition. Even if said pet can kill them. We think, as horrible as it may be, that for some that is part of the appeal. Even the ones that breathe out literal poison.
"We'll wear a mask around them. This wendigo-like one is too cute to not get belly rubs."
Said the OFFICIAL Human Representative of a monstrosity that can only be described as the living incarnation of countless teeth, fangs, claws, vivid seizure inducing iridescent feathers, and a body that extends from a inconspicuous ambush pose to a fully 8 meter tall six limbed nightmare machine of Death!
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suprsbg · 6 months
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Humans and Procrastination
So yaysun-
Actually it's Jason, but yes?
Jay-sun, don't you have to recalibrate the OMS pods today?
Well... yeah, but...
Are you injured? Has something happened?
No, no, I'm just... procrastinating.
What is procrastinating?
It's like... putting off something you need to do just because... you don't feel like it.
That seems counterproductive.
Yeah, that much is true.
So if you aren't recalibrating the pods, what ARE you doing? Usually when you aren't working you're playing Final Fantasy CDXX in your quarters.
Well, because I'm supposed to be recalibrating the pods it feels wrong to go play the game, so I'm just kinda sitting here doing random stuff and fidgeting.
What is fidg- never mind. Why don't you just recalibrate the pods then you can play your game?
I would love to just go and do it.
Then why don't you?
Because... something? I don't know honestly.
Is there anything I can do?
Ummm... I guess you could watch me get started?
How does that help?
Well, if someone is watching me then sometimes I feel more motivated to do it.
But a few days ago I was watching Alex write his log in the cafeteria and he said he couldn't get anything done?
Well, sometimes you want someone there and other times you don't. Honestly I don't understand why.
Humans...
Well, Humans with ADHD specifically.
I'm not even gonna ask.
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So yeah this is my first time writing a Jpitha/carionto style HAW thing, hope you like it. And yes I'm procrastinating a 40 word thing for Spanish right now.
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jpitha · 6 months
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Under enough pressure, Ravioli behaves as a gas
This feels like something from @carionto’s universe:
> There was still one aspect of the whole concept of a ravioli-loaded > railgun type wepon which we, lolling about late on a weeknight, with > only a few neurons randomly firing, could not resolve.  Would a chunk > of metal (can of ravioli) impacting another, larger, rest mass > structure (star destroyer) produce an "explosion" effect, or simply > punch an appropriately shaped hole as it passed through?  Bill?
What am I, the neighborhood blast physicist???  Well, maybe... :-)
It all depends on speed of impact versus the speed of sound in the target (what is called the Mach number, where Mach 1 means the speed of sound, Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound, etc), and the speed of the ravioli versus the speed of light in the target (which I'll call the Cerenkov number, where Cerenkov 1 is the speed of light in anything; Cerenkov 1.3 is the speed of high-energy protons in a water-cooled reactor (that's why you get that nifty blue glow), and you can get up to Cerenkov 2.4 using diamonds and nuclear accellerators.  In the late 40's people used to talk about Cerenkov numbers, but they don't anymore.  Pity.).  Lastly, there's the ravioli velocity expressed as a fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum (that is, as a fraction of "c").  "C" velocities are always between 0 and 1.
At low speeds (REAL low) the ravioli will simply flow over the surface, yielding a space-cruiser with a distinctly Italian paint job.
Faster (still well below speed-of-sound in the target) the metal of the space-cruiser's skin will distort downward, making what we Boston drivers call a "small dent".
Faster still, you may have a "big dent" or maybe even a "big dent with a hole in the middle", caused by the ravioli having enough energy to push the dent through, stretching and thinning the hull metal till the metal finally tears in the middle of the dent.
Getting up past Mach 1 (say, 5000 feet/sec for steel), you start to get punch-a-hole-shaped-like-the-object effects, because the metal is being asked to move faster than the binding forces in the object can propagate the "HEY!  MOVE!" information.  (After all, sound is just the binding forces between atoms in a material moving the adjacent atoms -- and the speed of sound is how fast the message to "move" can propagate.)  From this, we see that WileE Coyote often reached far-supersonic speeds because he often punched silhouette-type holes in rocks, cliffs, trucks, etc.
Around Mach 4 or so, another phenomenon starts -- compressive heating. This is where the leading edge of the ravioli actually starts being heated by compression (remember PV=nRT, the ideal gas law?)  Well, ravioli isn't a gas, but under enough pressure, ravioli behaves as a gas.  It is compressed at the instant of impact and gets hot -- very hot.  Likewise, the impact point on the hull is compressed and gets hot.  Both turn to gasses -- real gasses, glowing-white-hot gasses.  The gasses expand spherically, causing crater-like effects, including a raised rim and a basically parabolic shape.  In the center of the crater, some material is vaporized, then there's a melt zone, then a larger "bent" zone, and the raised rim is caused because the gas expansion bubble center point (the bending force) is actually *inside* the hull plate.  If the hull plate isn't thick enough, then the gas-expansion bubble pushes through to the other side, and you get a structural breach event (technically speaking, a "big hole") in the side of the space-cruiser.
Compressive heating really hits the stride up around 20,000 feet/sec (Mach 4 in steel, Mach 15 in air) and continues as a major factor all the way up to the high fractional Cerenkov speeds, where nuclear forces begin to take effect.
Aside: the "re-entry friction heating" that spacecraft endure when the reenter the atmosphere is NOT friction.  It's really compressive heating of the air in the path.  As long as the spacecraft is faster than Mach 1, the air can't know to get out of the way, so it bunches up in front of the spacecraft.  When you squeeze any gas, it gets hot.  So, the glowing "reentry gas" is really just squeezed air, which heats the spacecraft heat shield by conduction and infrared.  The hypersonic ravioli can be expected to behave similarly.
As we increase speed from the high Mach numbers (about 10 miles/sec) all the way up to about 150,000 miles/sec, not much different happens except that the amount of kinetic energy (which turns into compressive heat) increases.  This is a huge range of velocity, but it's uninteresting velocity.
At high fractional Cerenkov speeds, the ravioli is now beginning to travel at relativistic velocities.  Among other things, this means that the ravioli is aging more slowly than usual, and the ravioli can looks compressed in the direction of travel.  But that's really not important right now.
As we pass Cerenkov 1.0 in the target, we get a new phenomenon -- Cerenkov radiation.  This is that distinctive blue glow seen around water-cooled reactors.  It's just (relatively) harmless light (harmless compared to the other blast effects, that is).  I mention it only because it's so nifty...
At around .9 c (Cerenkov 1.1) , the ravioli starts to perceptibly weigh more.  It's just a relativistic mass increase -- all the additional weight is actually energy, available to do compressive heating upon impact.  The extra weight is converted to heat energy according to the equation E=mc^2; it looks like compressive heating but it's not.
[Here's where I'm a little hazy on the numbers; I'm at work and  don't have time to rederive the Lorentz transformations.]
At around .985 c (Cerenkov 1.2 or so), the ravioli now weighs twice what it used to weigh. For a one pound can, that's two pounds... or about sixty megatons of excess energy.  All of it turns to heat on impact.  Probably very little is left of the space-cruiser.
At around .998 c, the impacting ravioli begins to behave less like ravioli
and more like an extremely intense radiation beam.  Protons in the water of the ravioli begin to successfully penetrate the nuclei of the hull metal.  Thermonuclear interactions, such as hydrogen fusion, may take place in the tomato sauce.
At around .9998 c, the ravioli radiation beam is still wimpy as far as nuclear accellerator energy is concerned, but because there is so much of it, we can expect a truly powerful blast of mixed radiation coming out of the impact site.  Radiation, not mechanical blast, may become the largest hazard to any surviving crew members.
At around .9999999 c, the ravioli radiation may begin to produce "interesting" nuclear particles and events (heavy, short-lived particles). At around .999999999999 c, the ravioli impact site may begin to resemble conditions in the original "big bang"; equilibrium between matter and energy; free pair production; antimatter and matter coexisting in equilibrium with a very intense gamma-ray flux, etc.[1]
Past that, who knows?  It may be possible to generate quantum black holes given a sufficiently high velocity can of ravioli.
     --Bill
[1]According to physicist W. Murray, we may also expect raining frogs, plagues of locusts, cats and dogs living together, real Old Testament destruction.  You get the idea... 
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shantaelove · 5 years
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By Carionto on DeviantArt
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jurihanfemmefatale · 7 years
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Fanarts by Carionto.
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80scartoons · 7 years
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Thundercats - Cheetara minimalism by Carionto
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darksouldream · 7 years
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Kill la Kill - Matoi Ryuko minimalism wallpaper by Carionto
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carionto · 4 months
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Learning is a two way space street
Aliens: *welds a dozen weird alien computers together*
Human: "Uhh, what'cha doin?"
A: "Slapping things together to see if it works. You know, what you would do."
H: "But aren't you always complaining about us doing that?"
A: "Yes, but then it keeps working for some reason. Sometimes for no reason. So, why not."
H: "Yeah, fair, I got nothing. So what's this supposed to do?"
A: "Infinite processing power? Simulate the whole Universe from the dawn of time? Summon tacos? I dunno."
H: "Alright then. Well, uh, good luck with that? Huh... feels weird for me to say that."
A: "Now you know how we feel all the time."
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carionto · 8 months
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So, uhh, Humans did what they called an "oopsie"
They can turn off stars.
When they elaborated on how their reactors work - true nuclear fusion - they also explained, before the delegates passed out, that their failsafes include high density convection inhibitor rods that shoot out if the power output exceeds what it is currently set to. Except if a manual Overload protocol is engaged. You know, in case they need to go to 400% power. At the risk of blowing up everything. Psychopaths.
Then one of them had an idea. Another phrase the Galaxy must learn to look out for and try to persuade the human who uttered it to not do the idea. They'll still do it, of course, Humans are stubborn like that.
So, some of their ships can transform and double as Warp Gates. Truly fascinating technology, capable only through their absurd energy generation methods and reckless disregard for how the Universe works. They even gave us the blueprints. We thanked them, politely, but we'll have to figure out a safe way to do it first.
Currently their Warp Gates can only make a stable connection to the gravitational center of a large celestial body. As in - stars. Their reactors house miniature stars. They turn those off shockingly regularly for maintenance. One of the few things most of the Galaxy is better than Humanity is making things that don't break themselves through normal operation, but then what's "normal" for them is "excessively insane" to us.
This Human wanted to see what would happen if they sent a big pile of their convection inhibitor rods through a Warp Gate. "Fuck around and find out" is the expression they used, if we are recalling the words correctly.
Well, everyone "found out" that, yes, it actually works, and surprisingly quickly too. The chosen star was a distant Red Dwarf with only uninhabitable planetoids and some asteroid belts and no recorded stations within the system. It took about a week for the first signs of decreased activity to become barely noticeable. It hasn't been long enough to fully end the fusion cycle, but all observations point to the Red Dwarf becoming the first of its kind to retain enough hydrogen to do... we're actually not sure how that will unfold over the coming few million years.
Thankfully, the Human who had the idea was disappointed the star didn't just poof like their contained reactor ones do. The material cost and lengthy process also made it clear it has no real practical application.
Still, technically they can prematurely begin the end cycle of a stars lifespan.
Those of us with more active imaginations might find it hard to sleep at night knowing that, clearly, no Human idea will be left untested...
Oh FUCK! What if th- No. When they fine tune their Warp Gates, could they just send anything anywhere? We're screwed if Humanity ever gets angry.
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carionto · 8 months
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We'll do it our way
Been reading a bunch of Humans are Space Orcs and the like, and got me thinking - what if when aliens found humanity and our level of technology and method of propulsion for space travel, they decided that since explosions are way too hazardous and risky, that they're just not gonna let us leave on our vessels (via BS alien magic space tech). As a sort of intergalactic rite of passing (and poor results in the past of elevating a species like that), we have to figure out on our own how to not blow ourselves up once in space. But humans can be spiteful. We "have" to go in a direction they want? Fuck that. Aliens put a dome around Earth so we can't leave? Okay, that's a clear and practical problem to solve. Let's fix that instead!
_____________________________________
It had been just over sixty local cycles since First Contact with Humanity, and exactly sixty since the Federation had unanimously deemed it necessary to position a Responsibility Barrier around Earth.
Through countless observation relays, mass field generators, warp inhibitors (and the less spoken of and even less used laser batteries), any vessel - outside of local communication satellites, unmanned research vessels, or suborbital test vehicles - were prevented from leaving the planet.
Upon discovering Humanity, the Exploratory Commission Fleet quickly discovered a very hardy, innovative, diverse, violent, and adaptable advanced civilization on the cusp of entering the interstellar stage. There was one problem. Humans used explosions. For. Everything.
Their orbital spaces were already littered with micro-debris from their regular ventures into the local system. Practically every type of propulsion utilized highly volatile solutions, and they didn't even pretend to hide or be embarrassed by their history of weaponizing, well, anything and everything to be frank.
Wars and violence were common among nearly all sentient species, but there was something… peculiar, about how nonchalant the Human diplomats were about their supposed "solutions" to "tragedies" of the past.
We explained to them the dangers of their methods, showed examples of what happens when such line of thinking, without discarding these explosive ways, leads to - impassable fields of junk around once well traveled planets, now isolated; hastily jettisoned parts causing mayhem and destruction years down the line; entire Habitation Stations and their occupants reduced to faint rings around their homeworld from an "unplanned ignition"
We explained why we could not simply give them our safe technology, as they have to on their own give up the irresponsible ways first, lest they turned what was once safe into yet another means to an end. They "said" they understood, but it was all too clear the Humans would not follow our advice just like that. Hence the Barrier. This really angered the Humans.
They said it was stifling, that it was barbaric to "imprison" them like that. We tried to explained again why, but they would not listen, but we knew better. This had happened before and we would not allow it to happen again. It was for the greater good of both the Humans and the rest of the Galaxy.
For nearly sixty of their cycles, Humanity continued to advance and develop and flourish. We watched them with excitement at every new avenue of research they steered towards, silently encouraged them to keep going with every failure. They were getting close in several fields, we could see that Humanity was on the precipice of the right track. Then, one day, with a slight shimmer enveloping the planet and an eerie silence on all frequencies, the Earth just… vanished.
The Humans kept their true activity a secret, only after careful analysis of seemingly unrelated and unremarkable records did we figure out they were investigating a long abandoned line of research by all others in the galaxy - interdimensional travel. But there were no other traversable dimensions. That had long been tested by everyone - you can twist and bend and cut through the ones we have, but you are always bound to at least one of them.
It remained a mystery as to what truly happened to Humanity. Officially it was called a tragic scientific accident on an unprecedented scale. Earth and Humanity were memorialized as a bright species with infinite potential, but a recklessness that would serve as one of the starkest examples in the annals of Galactic history.
Until, nearly a millennia later, Earth just… popped back in. Right where it would have been had it continued to orbit around their star, almost as if that's exactly what it had been doing.
There was only a memorial station close to its original orbit, and some small research outposts dotted around the local system - it was decided to not terraform or colonize any of Sol's planets or install major stations within the system, as both a sign of respect to the deceased and a warning to all about the dangers of foolish science.
By the time the scrambled and panicked messages reached the nearest Coalition world and a small squad sent to investigate, everything had changed. Not only did they find Earth and Humanity, they were met by dozens of the largest space worthy vessels anyone had ever conceived of let alone dared to construct; orbital shipyards that each would put the production capacity of whole planetary SYSTEMS to shame; and a defiant attitude unmatched even by the previously thought exaggerated tales of our brief history with Humanity before the Vanishing.
The message we received from the Humans was simple:
"Thanks for the advice, but we do things our way. Now, let's start over, from an equal footing, shall we?"
(more while we were gone)
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carionto · 6 months
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C'mon, Really? Look, Just, Let Me Help You!
Humans: We need to have a talk about your secret war plans against us.
Aliens: W-what? No, that's not it, how-
H: Our intelligence operative are very good. Don't pretend these [throws folder on the table that scatters hundreds of pages of classified documents all over] aren't yours.
A: F-Fine! Yes! We made plans about how we should fight you if we ever got into a war. We admit it! What do you want?
H: Huh? No, what I'm trying to say is, why do your plans suck?
A: Err... what?
H: Yeah, compared to our plans and war games, you don't seem to utilize all the advantages you have against us. There's not as much coordination and specialization of forces as we expect in our simulations. What gives?
A: You've lost me.
H: Look, every civilization should run military simulations against EVERY existing party, not just the ones you're natural competitors, or ones you see as antagonistic. Hell, while we were "vanished" our military literally had nothing else to do and spent a solid 200 years making up every kind of scenario against every single potential power we might end up encountering once we "reappeared".
Honestly, there are so many things we are shocked about once we got our hands on your plans, I legitimately don't know where is the best place to begin.
Okay, for starters, why don't any of your plans include making use of our superior technology? It would work, we tested it as well. We built a scale model of one of your capital ships, plopped one of our fusion reactors in and BAM, shields and weapons instantly became on par with our Destroyers, and could even do some serious damage to our Dreadnoughts (for a few seconds before our counterattack vaporizes it, but that's besides the point), so we know your technology is fully capable of handling us.
A: For the millionth time, we are not using unstable power sources that could totally blow us up at any point!
H: It is safe! Those things only have a 0.002 percent chance to fail, and a one in six hundred thousand chance of THAT resulting in an explosion. We've only had twelve incidents the entire time we've been using them.
A: No.
H: Well you ain't winning a war against us with that attitude.
But anyway, one other thing your plans never do is blow up Earth and irradiate the shipyard orbits, what gives?
A: That's an abominable crime against, well, EVERYTHING!
H: Weak. But okay. One other thing though, and this one is just baffling, your deployments and gathering locations are always in the most obvious and convenient places. Those are, no joke, where we would place recon units and prepare ambushes the moment we even got a hint of a whiff of hostility from you. How come you never seem to account for us expecting you to do the obvious and pre-emptively counter that. And inversely, you never expect us to not be in the logical places where we should be.
A: I think my head is spinning from that. What?
H: Reverse psychology? Predictive behavior, or whatever it's called, not a psychologist. If you want to win against your enemy, you have to think like your enemy first.
You look dizzy. I know it's a lot to take in, but we'll guide you through this. Think of it as homework. After we have a more thorough meeting on this subject, we'll wait and let you figure things out back in your secret HQ's. But, if the plans we acquire later still won't account for the things we discussed, we'll be very disappointed.
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carionto · 5 months
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Huh? Nah, this doesn't need safety gear
It is horrifying what kinds of deadly activities Humans will engage with without even a mention of safety or precaution. Most alarmingly what their offspring dare to do.
Take, for example, cycling. Already, a vehicle that is literally as minimal in features as you can get, and requires the user to provide all balance. Lacking such an advanced inner ear, operating this device is nigh impossible for two thirds of the Galaxy. But their young manage to get the hang of it very quickly, and we're told it's a skill that once you learn it, you never forget. Even after decades, their "body remembers", which adds another layer of curiosity to how Human "muscle memory" functions and retains this other form of knowledge.
Once their children learn this skill, any skill really, they tend to experiment and go as far as they can with it. One time we saw a whole group of them riding around their school's outdoor gym field at nearly 35 km/h on the straights. I and several other delegates would quite literally die if one were to crash into us. And crash they did, we were shocked and panicked, but before we could alert anyone, the child simply brushed themselves off, stretched a little, spent MORE time in fact checking if their bike was fine, and then got right back on. Seemingly zero lessons learned as they crashed two more times within the next half hour.
As we left, a group of slightly older children on somewhat smaller but tougher looking bicycles with steel protrusions from the wheels. They seemed very energetic, so we followed them at a distance to a large open concrete park with strange geometric structures all around. Before we could question the purpose of this place, the kids were flying, their bikes were screeching, and we were terrified. Jumping off ramps and these half-cylinders, doing frankly impossible feats of acrobatics.
OH MY GOD ONE OF THEM LET GO OF THE BIKE MID JUMP!!!
Oh thank god, they caught it again before landing.
Why did they spin around before doing so though?
...
Stunts?
You... willfully endanger yourselves for... "s t y l e p o i n t s"
My hearts can't take it anymore today, please take me home.
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carionto · 6 months
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Life Imitates Art
Aliens: So, we've been studying your pop culture, and we have to ask - Where are your giant robots?
Humans: What!? No, that's silly, there's way too many moving parts, exposed motors, high center of gravity, it ju-
A: Stop it. We know you by now. Excuses like that don't deter you. Where are they?
H: ... fine.
The Humans lead the Aliens to the largest moon in the Sol system - Jupiter's Ganymede. Upon approach, a massive hatch slides open to reveal a deep tunnel going below the surface of the moon. Passing by typical Human amenities - hotels, shopping districts, various salons and service providers - a massive dome comes into view. Or, more specifically, the top fifth of what is a fourteen kilometer massive arena.
H: They're in there.
As the gates open and they step onto a viewing platform, a gruesome sight of rubble and crushed robot parts strewn about the arena comes into view. These form a complex and dangerous fighting environment for numerous robots, all remotely operated, engaged in all manners of fighting - one-v-one, small team skirmishes, literal tugs of war, and even entire armies of small robots waging war against either other similar armies or one giant robot, plus everything in between.
H: Like we said, they're not practical in any way, but like you guessed, yea. We like giant robots. I mean, everyone digs giant robots!
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carionto · 6 months
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Just needs a *little* more Sun
The Humans are searching for and cataloguing planets for potential colonization. It is an insanely long list and they've just started - they are willing to tolerate a lot. Like, partly shielded solar radiation, hostile weather patterns, changing tectonics, extreme temp-
right, Deathworlders. Nevermind.
Anyway, this list includes planets beyond what they should be able to tolerate by their own standards. As in, each planet lists how long a regular Human could survive with access only to food, water, and basic shelter. There are a lot of planets with the note: "One Standard Day or less". Most of them, not all for whatever reason, also have a note: "Terraforming efforts approved".
Interestingly, while the notes on suitability for Human survival go into granular detail, and offer extensive suggestions for measures on how to mitigate the negative and boost any positive aspects of any given analyzed planet. The terraforming bit is just that one sentence, and when we asked a Human colleague, they just shrugged and said:
"Case by case basis, there's a lot of different methods we wanna try out, and people will come up with new ones once they're actually at the planet, so it's impossible to preemptively detail what we're gonna do. It'll be fine, don't worry too much."
We decided to worry a bit and went to check out one of the planets. It had a single note in bold regarding the difficulties:
EXTREMELY LOW TEMPERATURES
When we arrived the Human station... was not in orbit of the planet, but instead quite a distance away just on the edge of the planet's gravitational influence and was technically orbiting the local star.
As we approached, we noticed a massive folded structure being constructed. It seemed very reflective, with another smaller structure that was mostly transparent. Confused, we inquired what this was about and if they had given up on terraforming the frozen planet.
"Ahh nah, dudes. We're making a big ol' lookin' glass and mirror ring. Keep it in, uhh, geo-orbit, or I guess solar orbit right between 'em. Gon' shine more Sun on that planet, warm it up natural like. More or less. My son came up with the idea while playin' with the other kids. Bet he'll be a proper science person one day."
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carionto · 7 months
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Hardcore Space Parkour
Some Humans are worryingly agile. And stupidly driven to endanger themselves. For no reason we can understand.
________________________
Within the Coalition governing station of the segment of the Galaxy where the Sol system is are countless embassies for each member civilization. Each is designed to accommodate their respective species (or multiple in certain cases) to the fullest while also being able to host guests from any other member.
Then there are the communal areas, set for a galactic standard that is viable for the majority - gravity at 0.6 Earth, far less of that dangerous oxygen, and slightly more humid and cooler than what Humans are normally comfortable with. In fact, Humans technically fall outside the Galactic standards and are all equipped with a partial breathing assistance unit and pressurized clothing to stimulate their circulation. While they can function reasonably well despite what we assumed would be too draining without assistance, most Humans do make use of these gadgets.
Some, however, prefer to "stimulate" themselves a bit differently.
There is a small group of individual Humans many have dubbed "Leaping Cortix" after an infamous invasive fuzzy gelatinous centipede-like pest species that always manages to make a hive on any sufficiently large space station or vessel given enough time. Everybody swears they're some kind of magic, and it's hard to dissuade such a notion when there are fairly common reports of ships on deep isolation missions, without making contact with anyone or anything else for years at a time, still one day find themselves with a pack of Cortix skittering about near their nutrition supplies!
This group of Humans, found the title amusing and have embraced it. One of them even made a hooded sweater with the name and a stylized Cortix jumping off the letter x.
The reason for the name is simple - despite becoming integrated into the Coalition just around a year ago, Humans seem to appear everywhere within this segment of the Galaxy. Mostly in small groups for tourism reasons, but the point still stands. And these Humans in particular appear to make it a habit to appear out of the most unexpected places.
The leaping portion comes from how this group tends to move around the communal areas. Most Humans adapt to the lower gravity and eventually (rather quickly actually) change how they move around when outside their embassy - the movements seem more relaxed, fluid, some even appear to exert almost no effort at all in their steps. This group on the other hand utilizes the full force of their incredibly dense musculature.
First, they jump good. Real good. Then they bounce and pivot, real fast. After a few days they started a game - get to any place without touching the floor. Not even a day later they managed to always be in the air.
At first it was impressive and quite mesmerizing. Quite a sight to behold as they got better and quicker at chaining their jumps and bounds together into one smooth motion that took them from one part of the station to the other in mere moments.
Then they started getting bored. And one of them had an idea. An "awesome" idea.
Add flying robots and moving obstacles.
Chaos ensued. Naturally.
As the Humans leapt off of one of the maintenance machines they programmed to hover between several distant structures, it could not compensate for the sudden recoil from the movement and crashed down on the floor. Thankfully it was above a small garden and only some artificial plants were damaged, as well as itself, but that was enough to call in the peacekeeping units to put a halt to their antics.
We deliberately brought a Human peacekeeper along to make the reprimand stick. The Leaping Cortix, most of whom are junior staffers and one is a retired military veteran now serving as a consultant, looked ashamed, but also sad. At least they seemed to understand the gravity of the situation (though perhaps not as well as the physics of gravity) as the wreckage was cleared in clear sight of everyone.
After the offending member was issued a token fine (as it was their first offense), the group as a whole became less active. Initially, most people felt relieved, but as the incident grew more distant in memory, the sight of the flying Humans started to become missed by quite a few.
Some from the more physically able races were even inspired to try this "parkour" the Humans had demonstrated and found it quite thrilling. When done in a lower than their normal gravity that is. Trying it at their standard caused a few broken bones and cracked shells.
There is currently a petition by the permanent residents to dedicate a large open indoor field for such extreme physical sports as well as to commission the design of a variety of machines to facilitate, as written in the official documentation - "stimulating courses to improve the physical well being and readiness of all participants".
I.E. - Humans introduced a new sport to us and many are hooked.
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carionto · 7 months
Text
Could you spare a moon or five?
Aliens: No.
Humans: Pretty please?
A: No!
H: C'mooooonnnn, you don't need those rocks around your gas giants do you? We'll put them to good use, we promise!
A: NO!!!
H: Just the small ones, we'll hook up a bunch of hypderdrives in a jiffy and haul 'em out with some dreadnoughts, you won't even notice.
A: STOP PILLAGING SPACE!
...
..
.
H: Hey.
A: What.
H: D'ya think there's a way to harvest matter from black holes?
A: [incoherent]
H: We'll take that as a maybe.
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