First humans ever to leave the solar system suddenly drop out of communications and the ship can’t be found with any equipment. After one month of no contact their home countries start reluctantly holding funerals for the space heroes only for them all to turn up, healthy, well fed and extremely disoriented, in the middle of Tokyo, talking about alien abduction. Turns out that aliens found the poor humans straying out of their solar system, presumably lost, and took them to Alien Wildlife Rehabilitation before dumping them back in the middle of their native habitat.
I literally just googled “city with the highest population”
I’ll bet they have cool new tattoos that turn out to be tracking devices too. Just in case these spirited individuals try to make another break for it.
… do the tats make them stupid popular, like that time scientists gave birds tracker anklets and it accidentally made them ultra fuckable
Let’s say yes. Those alien scientists are learning so much, and none of it is accurate.
important to note that wildlife rehabbers dont just go around grabbing animals they think need to be somewhere else. If they did that then that would interfere with how a local popupation might be moving or expanding its habitat.
Wildlife rehabbers only grab animals that are hurt in some way or are in danger of being hurt because they are living where a human does not want them (such as removing a racoon from an attic), or might even be a health hazard for the human…
So… what this implies is that the original spaceship either suffered a malfuncrion and the aliens - noticing how the little ship with the migrating apes on it was suddenly breaking down - swooped in to take care of them and restore them to full health before returning them to their home planet and a popluar human colony…….
OR
The ship was encroaching on the territory of something far more dangerous
I think it would be funny if the “something far more dangerous” was just, like, giant space ships.
It turns out, the milky way is like some kind of protected reserve or park, and as soon as people left it they wandered on to the space version of a busy highway, and their space ship was so small and slow that they had to be picked up and moved like a turtle that decided to cross the road.
The sympathetic aliens rescuing them originally wanted to send them in the direction they were headed and let them keep going (like you should with turtles), but discovered they were very, very, far away from any habitat they could survive in, and so took them to the Alien Wildlife Rehab, who just gave them all a short checkup and returned them to the nearest place where humans could be found.
Please forgive how horrifically this was recorded (the screen reader mutes itself in recordings, which made it entirely useless for this post, which required a second camera) but I wanted to show people what alt text Actually Does for screen readers because I think a lot more people would take the time to add it if they knew why.
This is how the default screen reader function built into my phone “reads” an image, one without alt text and one with.
(I can’t add alt text description to videos, it seems, which feels a little ironic given the post.)
When the first image, without alt text, is selected by a screen reader, it just reads out “photo”.
When the second image, with alt text, is selected, it reads out the alt text - in this case, “A blurry picture of a gray tabby cat sitting on a white carpeted floor.”.
Being able to use alt text is far easier on screen readers because the image is a larger object to select - descriptions in plain text below an image are still helpful, but require enough vision to accurately select, and enough vision to know they’re an image description to begin with.
So please, when possible, add alt text to photos, art, and screenshots you’re uploading! A lot of phones can copy text from images now, which is how I add image IDs to other people’s text heavy posts - there’s really no reason to post a bunch of text heavy screencaps and not at least copy and paste the text into the alt text, and it makes a huge difference for accessibility.
Thank you! ^w^
Weighing in as a PC user!
I’d have to find appropriate posts to give you an audio demonstration, but an image or GIF without alt text is simply read as “Graphic image,” or “Button Image” on the Dash or Discord, where images display as buttons (probably to expand them so you can see them?)
When there is alt text, it still identifies it as a graphic or button and announce it is an image, but then it reads out the alt text!
I know it is difficult to get into the alt-text box on mobile, which is why many people don’t like to do it, but the answer to this is demanding such a feature be made easier to use, not refraining from using it at all and making staff think it doesn’t matter!
I worked for a pizza place that was near a very large software company. Deliveries to the neighborhoods or offices where all the tech workers lived was usually pretty awesome because theyâd tip rather well. But there was one apartment that started to become a concern for us drivers. The man ordering was always polite, always paid, always tipped $4, and he would have been a perfect customer. Heâd order breadsticks and a salad twice a week, and sometimes heâd include a bottle of root beer.
Except when he opened his door, you could see an alarming amount of our breadsticks boxes stacked everywhere inside. Not like a few on the counter and a couple by the trash, stacks and stacks of them. Even worse, it was only our boxes in there. He wasnât just ordering from us often, we were the only place he was getting food outside of work. Now, Iâve worked in some of those tech offices myself, I know that thereâs enough decent food options just hanging out in the break rooms that this guy was probably not malnourished, but the way his living space was a shrine of greasy cardboard was a clear sign that this guy didnât have a healthy relationship with our food.
Our manager was a really cool dude though, and he heard the drivers joking about the boxes and asked a couple of us âIs this like a messy guy or a guy who needs help?â We agreed it was probably the latter. So on his day off, the manager went to the guys apartment with an envelope that had gift cards for several other restaurants that delivered in that area and chatted with him. Manager found out that the guy was an immigrant on a Visa who was struggling to find American food he liked, and too socially awkward to ask anyone. So he talked with him through a few menus and helped him with some recommendations. Then he helped the guy load all the old boxes into his truck to take to the dump, in exchange for a promise not to order from us more than once a week.
For a little while, the manager had a note on the calendar showing the last time the guy had ordered, and a couple times he had to hold his ground and refuse the guyâs order. But after that chat, I never saw the stacks of boxes again, and the guy would boast about the different meals heâd had.
AITA for striking my (M43) son (M20) when he rejected me as his father?
I understand that the title might have you thinking the worst, but please hear me out.
I didn’t have a relationship with my son for basically all his life. This was due to my circumstances at the time: I went through a major personal tragedy and was severely injured, to the point of being on life support. To this day I have a lot of issues with my health.
I recently reconnected with my son. I immediately invited him to meet my boss (M92), in hopes that I could set him up with a job opportunity. I feel that this is significant. As far as I know, my son has been working in menial jobs in agriculture, but then apparently chose to leave that life and - to my shock - join a criminal syndicate.
I felt as if getting a good government job would be a way to turn over a new leaf in his life, especially given his past. However, he immediately became combative. I attempted to give him some guidance in managing his emotions, but he rejected that as well.
I’m sad to say that the argument became physical. Some blows were exchanged, but in the end, I was angry enough to strike him. I immediately felt very bad, and decided to offer him the government job on the spot. He rejected me again, and chose to leave very abruptly. I haven’t had any contact with him since.
So, AITA?
Edit: Yes, I admit that to call it striking him was an understatement. To clarify, I cut off his hand.
Edit: However, I feel like it should be stated that I myself am a quadruple amputee and we have excellent healthcare.
Edit: I did not immediately identify myself as his father when we met. I think this was my mistake. I think he would have been much more receptive of my message had I done so. As it stands I only told him of our relationship after I had struck him.
Edit: My wife is not in the picture. To my knowledge she passed before his birth.
A gray cat stares quietly at a nearby orange tabby, squinting her eyes, flattening her ears, and licking her lips. The tabby glares back, wrinkles his nose, and pulls back his whiskers. Cat people know whatâs about to go down: a fight. If looks and growls donât resolve the budding tiff, claws will pop out and fur will fly.
Those faces arenât the only ones cats make at each other, of courseânot by a long shot. In a study published this month in Behavioural Processes, researchers tallied 276 different feline facial expressions, used to communicate hostile and friendly intent and everything in between. Whatâs more, the team found, we humans might be to thank: Our feline friends may have evolved this range of sneers, smiles, and grimaces over the course of their 10,000-year history with us.
âMany people still consider catsâerroneouslyâto be a largely nonsocial species,â says Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Lincoln who was not involved in the study. The facial expressions described in the new study suggest otherwise, he notes. âThere is clearly a lot going on that we are not aware of.â
Cats can be solitary creatures, but they often form friendships with fellow kitties in peopleâs homes or on the street; feral cats can live in colonies of thousands, sometimes taking over entire islands.
Lauren Scott, a medical student and self-described cat person at the University of Kansas, long wondered how all these felines communicated with one another. There has to be love and diplomacy, not just fighting, yet most studies of feline expression have focused on aggression.
The pair discovered a total of 276 distinct facial expressions made toward other catsânot so far removed from the 357 produced by chimpanzees, Florkiewicz says, and well more than many had thought cats capable of. Each expression combined about four of 26 unique facial movements, including parted lips, jaw drops, dilated or constricted pupils, blinks and half blinks, pulled lip corners, nose licks, protracted or retracted whiskers, and/or various ear positions. By comparison, humans have 44 unique facial movements, although researchers are still working out how many different expressions they combine into, Florkiewicz says. Dogs have 27 facial movements, but again, their total number of expressions isnât known.
In the current study, the duo found that the vast majority of the catsâ expressions were either distinctly friendly (45%) or distinctly aggressive (37%), the scientists say. The remaining 18% wereâlike the Cheshire Catâs smileâso ambiguous that they fell into both categories.
What exactly the felines were âsayingâ to one another with these expressions remains unclear, Florkiewicz says. But overall, cats tend to move their ears and whiskers toward another cat during friendly interactions, and to move them away from their compatriot during unfriendly interactions. Constricted pupils and licking lips also tend to accompany such rivalrous encounters.
Interestingly, some of the catsâ friendly expressions resemble those made by people, dogs, monkeys, and other animals, Mills says, hinting that these species may share âa common play face.â
Although the researchers havenât been able to compare their results with those of wild felines, they do know that all close relatives of the domestic cat (including its direct ancestor, the African Wildcat), are ferociously solitary animals. Pet cats might have retained some of that defensive communication, Florkiewicz says, but these domestic descendants probably started to pick up friendly facial expressions as they gathered to await humansâ dinner leftovers.
Georgia Mason, a behavioral biologist at the University of Guelph, says she was âvery impressedâ by the new study. One day it might be used to design an app to help cat owners better understand their petsâ subtle cues, she adds. âThis could really help the cat-human bond.â
In the meantime, the findings may help potential adopters select cats that are more likely to get along with their existing pets, Florkiewicz says. Should those fur babies be canine, however, all bets are off. Whether dogs also get the meanings of catty facial expressions remains to be determined.
In order to have good politics, I think you should want to be an anarchist. Like, yeah, we probably need a state, or something functionally much like a state, to make sure antibiotics get manufactured and the roads get paved and people have enough to eat. But you should be in perpetual unease over that fact. When institutions of power begin to overstep their bounds, you should not hesitate to make it their problem. You have to think the Man is fucking bullshit, man.
Like, I think power will probably always exist. If it isn’t explicit it’ll be implicit. But that doesn’t mean you have to accept it, endorse it, support it. You should be putting systems of power through the wringer at every turn. Because power will be better behaved in a society where everyone is a bit of an anarchist on the inside, where we know it’s all fucking bullshit.
Lex | androgyne | back on my goddamn bullshit like it's 2012
