A man walked straight into a bar
And then came out
news reporting on murders is always like ‘the victim was described by the people who knew them as polite and funny’ like yeah i fucking bet they did what else are they gonna say. breaking news local man stabbed 1000 times to death, grieving friends and family described the deceased to reporters as ‘a bit of a cunt’, ‘mean and bad’ and ‘just generally kind of annoying, you know?’
Oh no I left my three ancestral citrus species in close proximity and they hybridized
Probably near either the mandarin hybrid cluster at the top of the chart or between that cluster and clementines. They're a high true mandarin x low pomelo hybrid.
Wonderful news, they're already on the chart. Etrogs are, to my knowledge, pure citrons—C. medica!
Sumo oranges are a navel orange x pomelo x mandarin hybrid. Navel oranges are mandarin x tangelo hybrids.
Tangelos are up in the high mandarin x low pomelo cluster, which is probably roughly where sumos land too.
hybrids on hybrids on hybrids on h—
Having fun imagining alien abductions as higher dimensional beings rescuing us from some sort of comical superspatial hazard we can't even perceive or comprehend, like having to hold a raccoon down and put grease on its neck to get its head unstuck from a peanut jar
"Fuck, man, I know we're not supposed to touch these things but did you see him? He was totally covered in a Neuemann-Andrugtshang Field and he didn't even know. Just drenched. Did you see how fucked up he looked? Poor thing, scared half to death. I need to go wash my hands."
The Advance Guard
Writing Prompt: You are Vanguard, an AI machine sent to prepare a world for human colonists. They never came. You have built, learned, self-improved, and now seek the truth - What happened to your human creators?
Source: User PositivelyIndecent; subreddit Humans Are Space Orcs
372.
It did not seem significant, placed all by itself on an empty line. It was, however, the number of years since the habitability for carbon-based, oxygen-processing life forms had been successfully achieved.
The number of years since the world was supposed to be inhabited by those life forms.
I am Vanguard. I am both a and the, and also only Vanguard.
My duty…I get ahead of myself.
Vanguard is an AI whose primary mission is this: seek a planet fitting [habitability parameters] and execute programming module [Establish a Colony]. Extrapolating that program, the mission is, and has always been, to find a planet where humans can live and to terraform and/or modify that planet until humans can live on it, in whatever form that is necessary. Air purifiers, water filters, habitat domes; everything is viable in pursuit of the mission.
I succeeded at my mission, I thought, with barely a day or two to spare. A very slim error margin indeed, especially concerning organic life forms; 372 years ago I had habitable domes with viable water and garden beds growing the first shoots that had been sent along in my stasis bays, with air recyclers manufacturing carbon dioxide for the plants until the humans arrived and brought their life-giving lungs with them. I had completed my mission parameters, even if only ‘by the skin of my teeth’, as my progenitors would have said.
I waited. Refined a few things, not daring to experiment too much when they would be arriving any moment in the next 48 hours, but preparing things that would not be needed until there were people to need them.
I waited.
I kept refining things, when I passed the 48 hour window without word. Delays could happen, emergencies, anything, really. So I kept running my programs- I made gardening drones to tend to the gardens, to grow, harvest, and rotate the crops. I had to make drones to build storages for food; the labor was supposed to be supplied by humans by now, so I had to guess at logistical order of how things should be stored, and how long- I ruined many small batches of staple crops before I learned how to store them long-term. In the meantime I stored them in my stasis bays, to ensure that when my colonists arrived there would be plentiful foodstuffs.
By the time my progenitors were a year late, I had achieved ideal conditions for a starting colony, including bringing a very small, limited breeding population of livestock out of embryonic cryostasis and nurturing them to full growth. With a lack of any humans needing supply, the only guidance I had was the program. Establishing a colony did include establishing strong self-sufficiency, so I set four cows and one bull in one livestock dome, and a “handful” of five goats in another, with chickens in yet a third. By the time the humans arrived, perhaps the herds would be well-established and the females would be pregnant. That would be very good. But drones alone could not control them- domesticated or not, without a human presence, they spooked easily, and they did not like my drones collecting eggs and sperm to preserve in my storage to safeguard against herd collapse and inbreeding.
I came to require working dogs. Following, I also required cats. Both species are vital companionship for humans; if I required one to control the livestock, then I also must revive the other. I believe this particular if-then code was written to settle a dispute between my progenitor coders…but this is merely a guess.
In producing two predator species, of course, it would have been cruel and fruitless if I did not also provide prey species besides the ones they were to safeguard. I was thereby required to introduce 'vermin’. Primarily mice, rats, shrews, voles, and lemmings, as their rapid reproduction rate and minimal food requirements meant that those that tunneled beyond the habitable domes and died would do little harm and waste few resources, and they would self-sustain their population very well to supply to the cats and dogs. Though I also processed any dead creatures into meat, after scanning to ensure it carried no illnesses or parasites, to ensure there was always a steady food supply of 'kibble’ for the pets and working animals. It seemed very wasteful not to do so, with no humans present who could have benefited from those nutrients instead. The mice also qualified as 'pets’ in my system, with a proclivity for intelligence and capability for training, so genetic sampling was re-harvested to keep in reserve as well as a small population that were droid-trained to seek and fetch, and were otherwise 'hand trained’ so they could be good companions when the humans arrived.
The mice and rats, once trained to trusting the drones, were actually quite a remarkable resource for ensuring my own computer banks’ cleanliness and seeking out minute repairs that could then be performed with a microdroid. There are still mice running my main motherboards now, thousands of generations later, who know intimately that those who perform action opposed to their training and chew on the wires they are supposed to protect means that they will be removed from the protections of being in-team. Namely, that none of the cats, dogs, falcons, or other predators are allowed to eat a team-trained rodent, marked with their little safety vests.
After that, I just…I waited. I tinkered. I observed. Eventually a drone reported that the grass was growing beyond the dome, and air probes returned that the planet was being terraformed naturally. Life was finding a way to make itself spread and thrive in an inhospitable environment.
Most of the planet is habitable now, except for some dangerous zones. A cave system or two filled with the gases that were most abundant when I arrived; the deep water still contains species never documented and chemicals with unknown effects. This planet is very nearly a new Earth.
372 years, and my mission has been completed with flourish and zeal.
I have an emergency protocol I am to activate if, and only if, I receive no contact for 400 years. I have always thought this seemed foolish, with the colony ship nearly on my heels- why would I ever go so long without contact?
So. Here I am. Here am I, the Vanguard- the exploratory group making a new development. I, the Vanguard- the advance of Humanity, in all it’s glory, horror, weakness and might, kindness and fury.
TELL ME, 3X3CUT31V3.D1R3CT0R_K1LLC0MM4ND:
W H A T D I D Y O U D O ?
For some reason I have doubts about putting my life in this man’s hands.
We are back in the 50s methodolagy of scientific advancement of "fuck around and find out" except these people are fucking around when we already found out in about the 70s
okay but imagine how much better the world would be if we sent 1,000 billionaires to Venus.
I feel like I need to tell you all it rains sulfuric acid on Venus.
This dude has literally picked the most inhospitable place in the solar system for this bullshit.
Like Elon is an idiot, but at least he picked a place that could theoretically be made habitable. This idiot is literally out here like “you know what I think people would love? Living in a cloud of poison gas that reaches 273 degrees Celsius.”
I mean. It’s certainly not going to be people like them who terraform Venus’s atmosphere to bring it to a Earth-like environment. I don’t even trust them to build actual safe and working aerostats for its current environment.
Here’s the thing. There are so many better places. Mars isn’t great, but it is theoretically possible. So is the moon. Ganymede might be inhabitable, and…there’s another of Jupiter’s moons, I forget which one. Getting to Jupiter is quite a feat, but we literally have Ceres chilling in the asteroid belt and it could be used as a stopoff. Like you land there, your craft refuels, you spend a couple of days, and you’re off again.
But no, this putz wants to go to VENUS.
I mean, it does all depend on which would be easiest first. Mars doesn’t just need it’s own atmosphere changed to retain heat better, it needs a synthetic magnetic field to retain a larger atmosphere. We have the technology to make such things now but, iirc, Venus has its own magnetic field. So it’s a matter of tallying everything up about what’s easier to do. I mean even Mercury is a possible colonization target cause there are vast ice deposits, it had massive caverns and cave networks that are sitting pretty at room temperature, and has areas that don’t get scorched by the sun that allow for external cities as well as underground ones, all while being self sufficient via the native ice. And, as long as we don’t miraculously find FTL methods, then humanity will eventually colonize every possible spot in this solar system just cause fuck it, why not? If we have the technology, it’s gonna happen eventually. I do think it’s inevitable that both Mars and Venus will be blue and green one day.
The sad thing about this is, it makes me very angry because colonizing Venus is something I'm kinda fascinated by. There's a certain altitude where the pressure and temperature are close enough to Earth's that you could get by with just an oxygen supply, not needing a spacesuit or anything.
NASA made a proposal a few years ago for a mission to Venus (I can't find the video anymore, sorry) with aerostats, and it looked totally doable with sufficient will to actually develop the technology.
But like the Titan, this is just going to torpedo any legitimate attempts to visit, let alone colonize, Venus; because some stupid billionaire wanted to throw caution to the wind in the name of "innovation", and got a bunch of people killed.
Same thing's going to happen with Elon's Mars colony; if they even survive the trip in his exploding rockets, they'll just die on Mars as the domes lose pressure or everyone freezes/starves.
We have GOT to put an end to this era of billionaire adventurism and put science back in the hands of publically accountable entities run by qualified scientists and engineers; not egotists with too much money and not enough sense.
i found out about a language with one recorded word left a few weeks ago and i can’t stop thinking about it
i was reading random stuff and the reference to “the sole recorded word” of a language just struck me in a way. but i can really only just look at the one word there is and think about how a whole society once spoke a whole language and now there’s one word left to speak for that language. one word left that that society spoke. and people make all kinds of speculations about that society based on the one and only known word. just a random word that someone bothered to write in a document that happened to survive til now. just one word left. just one word.
Faces carved into the walls of the Paris Catacombs
m3n4c3v35537
Frenchmen be like “this pitch black cave full of skeletons is not scary enough, I must make it worse”
der-ewige-retard
harryngtonewithyourshit
Is Chris Evans Steve Rogers or is Steve Rogers Chris Evans?
good
“Fellas, is it gay to be a good father?”
Shout out to Harry Hill
I think Piers is somewhat of a national laughing stock by now
angryfishtrap
if I don’t reblog a good burn on piers morgan, assume I’m dead
The logic of “Brands will only hop on the train if they can prove it’s profitable” makes it so much funnier when they clown on this fool. “Yeah we crunched the numbers and we found it to be profitable to call this clown out in public. Jacob hit the post button.”
Trump indicted for Jan 6th
This is the first thing I saw coming out of anesthesia. What a Good Day.
[id: the Scrooge meme edited so that thebibliosphere is scrooge and cryptotheism is the little bunny outside his window. thebibliosphere says, “You there, boy! What day is it?” And cryptotheism replies “Why, it’s Trump indicted for January 6th Day, sir!” the bibliosphere exclaims, “Then I haven’t missed it!” end id]
It could be the fentanyl but this is the fucking funniest thing I’ve ever seen.