Be curious!

Baby Fever

Somewhere in the galaxy, the child of a fairly wealthy family: “But [elongated whiny alien equivalent of parental caregiver except the species doesn’t recognise gender] I really really really want a human!!”

“Honey you know it’s better for them to stay in their natural habitat”

“But that one!! That one is clearly ill suited to its environment [parental caregiver], it’s so miserable look at that pathetic wet thang 🥺🥺 and the members of it’s species who are supposed to be helping clearly aren’t! Look how [some unquantifiable by our standard equivalent of malnourishment] it is! Pleaseeeee [parental caregiver]! We have the means to take care of it properly!!”

“Sighhhhh….promise you’ll take good care of it?”

“Yes!! Yes!!!”

“[alien name incomprehensible to human mind] ?!?!?! Your human??? Your human just?? Look I know some earth species shed their skin, like snakes, but I thought what if, what if it’s a distress thing like when lizards loose their tails??”

“Oh, don’t worry, they just took off their jacket, it was probably a bit warm in here for them”

“Jacket?”

“Oh yeah ‘clothes’, they’re not a part of their body”

“They’re not????”

“Yeah humans are one of a kind, they for some reason evolved hairless but still in need of thermal regulation so they started to wear external materials to warm up. Over time it’s become a comfort thing though. They usually get distressed when bare even if the environment is satisfactory”

“Oooooo”

“Yeah and you know what’s super cool?? There is culturally so much variation in what they cover themselves in! And each human has their own sense of ‘style’ so you really have to make sure they’re comfortable with the textures and colours and stuff”

“Oh so like [alien method of altering the body for aesthetics] “

“No no they do that too. They call it ‘piercings’ and ‘tattoos’ but those aren’t as common and cause pain to implement. Also crucial difference, as I said, ‘clothes’ aren’t attached to their bodies. They usually connect at points in the material or the material stretches to fit over them and snaps back to fit snugly so it doesn’t fall off”

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

no matter what the situation is, they're always bringing the social interaction to a screeching halt with these jokes. nobody ever wants to participate in this joke with them. nobody agrees with the premise. nobody ever knows what to say afterwards, it's just an awkward moment and a subject change. but they just keep doing it.

This is bat friendly street lighting, which not only looks sick as fuck but allows bats to pass through without disturbance, as they cannot see red.

Other materials at the time, namely clay, would absorb flavors and germs meaning that if you ate beef off a clay plate your next meal with that plate could have beef flavor and microbes common on cow meat on it.  That would leak out seemingly at random no less.  Heck imagine a sick person coughing into their soup bowl and then months later their germs hiding in the clay would pop out to infect whole new people.

Also the earliest human use of glass we know of is for its sharpness.  Pre-historic people would use volcanic glass as sharp knives for food preparation.  Also beads.  Pretty much any new substance humans get their hands on for most of our history we immediately try to make into beads.