My View On Politics:

If your democrat friends start muttering about stolen election conspiracy theories, the time to have a sit down with them and express your concerns is NOW, while you still have a chance to reach them, not 6 months from now when they're fully conspiracy-pilled.

Here's some of the talking points and why they're bullshit:

'10 million votes don't just disappear!' -> Joe Biden's 81 million votes were a statistical outlier, sparked by the recent experience of the Trump presidency. The democrats failed to maintain that sense of urgency, but Harris still got more votes than Hillary Clinton, more than Obama and more than any previous democratic candidate. These numbers are not weird at all.

'The Republicans tried to infiltrate election- and vote counting organizations!' -> yeah, they did, and yet hundreds of independent legal observers didn't see anything go wrong enough to raise any alarms. Independent exit polls are also very consistently similar to the counted votes. Tons of international organizations specialized in this stuff observed the election and didn't see a reason to raise the alarm.

'But I know a dozen democrats whose mail-in votes were not counted!' -> In any election a certain number of votes are registered as invalid because something was wrong with the ballot. In a country the size of the US, that translates to many thousands of votes. The internet allows these people to find each other, creating the false impression that a suspiciously large group of voted was not valid.

'Musk used Star Link to mess with electronic voting!' -> Electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet and dozens of independent media have already debunked this myth. It is absolutely impossible to use Star Link to fake election results.

'There is voter disenfranchisement!' -> This is true. This has always been true, for every election. It's an issue worth talking about but it's not a special secret conspiracy that's unique to this election.

But just as importantly as the facts: sit down with your friend and talk about the anxiety that's behind their conspiracy leanings. Acknowledge their pain and fear. Help them find ways to feel less powerless and regain their sense of agency. Take them to a mutual aid event, involve them in a fundraising event for a marginalized group, invite them to a local community effort. If they spend more time feeling connection and empowerment and less time doom scrolling online, they're far more likely to stay in reality.

It gets even funnier when you realize Koko used broken sign language, which the people around her made note of because they wanted to fit the narrative that other primates can keep up with out complex language systems.

Put koko and a human that signs in the same room to have a conversation, and no conversation will happen.

Sorry to break the illusion of Koko having the frontal lobe compacity of a human. She's a gorilla, not a human; the language part of the brain (frontal lobe) in her brain isn't as gigantic as a human's. The computer just can't support that massive and complex of a program that is human sign language. At least not in a direct "import, immediate output" kind of way that we recognize as a cohesive form of communication.

It dawned on my why in "historical/medevial" movies, nothing is what it should be, be it the armor of that time, the outfits of that decade (yes, they changed that quickly), the architecture isn't of the time period, or even the accent is incorrect

Either:

A) The people behind it don't care that much

B) The items would be too expensive to produce. Just look at Henry VIII's armor; that stuff is stupid, complicated, and fancy... wait, LOTR has crews slave away at chainmail, which is very time-consuming and can get very complicated

C) You'll never tell who's who on the battlefield... oh wait, banners exist

D) History is too boring or takes forever to hit all the main points over a century... even though there are ways to show the passing of time and, just, game of thrones

E) speaking on an OP or earlier accent can get unintelligible if you're not accustomed to it... but subtitles exist

And finally. 99.99% of the time, axes and swords are worn on the hip, not the back. The only exception is the beast being oo long to wear on the side.

Spears are cheap and are stupid easy to use, especially with a sheild.

Combat is always fast and can lead to a messy ground fight. Yes, getting bonked really hard is an option. Bows were used by strong people and were fired quickly and/or with high precision (trick shots were used to pass the time, not hitting archery targets)

People snuffing it was a normal occurrence, be it from illness, infection, accidents, or fighting.

"But it's a movie," yeah, and my countless hyoerfixations say otherwise

Post corrections/clarifications are my favorite genre of humor: a compilation

What if, instead of being shamed for eating the fruit in the garden of eden, Adam and Eve were praised for learning?

"Congrats, you two have knowledge, now go out and learn about the world."

The God of the Bible is turned into a disappointed father rather than an angry God.

"Why did you guys do that? You should've known better."

"A family of 8 made a boat without any directions, I just gave dimensions. They're smarter than all of you."

Many primates are put in enclosures for public eyes, and shenanigans always ensue when the public instigate them.

Imagine if humans were put into enclosures. What could possibly go wrong?

Entry 10-5786:

Since our last entry on entry regarding our human companion (Male), a lot has happened:

Starting the day after our last entry about him, he found the human section in our database and found that we had videos of people doing different types of work. "For studying your kind in their natural states," we told him.

After some time, he seemed to be fascinated with the art of heating metal up with fire and banging it with a hammer into different shapes; a craft that seemed to have been practiced by their species for many of their centires.

After looking into it myself, I discovered that one has to destroy a large quantity of valuable resources and burn the end result just to get the metal hot enough to work.

Telling my finding to Steve (what our human perfers to be called by), he replied with, "Yeah, that seems to be a pattern for my species; a lot of work to make something valuable."

A few weeks later, as we were gathering resources from Planet 115-X-18, we found him bringing in resources of his own into the ship, which was unusual for him. We didn't think much of it.

We should've asked what he was up to that day.

Over a period of several months, he renovated his living quarters to resemble the workshop of the person working metal in our database, fit with forge, chimney, a hunk of metal to hit in and a workbench with tools. His bed seemed to be moved to the neighboring quarters. "It'll be fine," he told us after we asked him why he moved his bed.

We lost seem for several days as we heard repeated banging and the faint smell of something burning coming from that area. Steve seemed to be happy, but he smelled like the burning smell every day.

"You'll appreciate what I'm up to," he told us at meat time.

The day after that, he showed up what he made: a knife

We immediately told him he wasn't allowed a weapon on the ship, but he insured us it wasn't what it was.

"Humans don't have sharp teeth or claws, so when we have time cut something, we need something to do it for us. A knife is one for those things. It's no different than the pencil you let me have," he told us, then demonstrated what it could do by removing a thin curls off the piece of wood he had with him. Where'd he had the desire to do any of this still make us wonder about to this day.

He seemed to make more and more refined knives as time went on; making more tools to help him to do so.

This seemed to both keep him busy and give us the opportunity to see his thinking process.

He seemed to like certain shapes of tools over others and seemed to learn how to shape wood while learning "blacksmithing" (what he called what he was doing).

These days, he's been hourding rocks and stones that were larger than his hand while we are out gathering supplies and seemed to be working them into a useful shape because the metal of the knife he keeps with him now resembles a mirror rather than the dark grey, black or dark orange look we see his tools in on occasion.

He's given us items we never knew we needed until they were in place. Just the other day, he gave me a hanger to hold my hand computer when it's not in use.

He's been staying dirty, but he doesn't seem to mind; he seemed to have found a source of joy in expressing his own species.

End transmission

Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?