Roman Snow

pairs well with this one

@urlocallesbiab replied:

Cesare is such a great character bc he's got a really fascinating and dramatic backstory dealing with mortality, loss of autonomy and the fear of pursuing personal expression

I need a “humans are space orcs” thing where all sentient species are weird like that, but in their own unique ways

The thing about "humans are space orcs" is it was originally conceived of as a response to science fiction tropes in which every alien species had its own special thing except humans, whose special thing was either Most Generic, Most Adaptable, or Most Je Ne Sais Quoi. Like, in a lot of science fiction, Klingons are Honorable Warriors, Vulcans are Logical Scientists, Romulans are Cunning Strategists, and humans are all of the above in a way that leaves us slightly less good than any of them at their shtick but better overall and able to triumph because of our lack of specialization and the assumption that we are, somehow, just destined to be the best. See this scene from Enterprise for what I'm talking about. There's a similar scene in Mass Effect where Mordin talks about how humans are more variable and adaptable and less predictable than all the other races in that setting, which is super annoying if you know anything about how much our species is defined by the genetic bottleneck we suffered during the Ice Age -- the generic bottleneck that has left us all so genetically similar to each other that we can do crazy things like donate blood and organs to each other, things other species can't tolerate.

A recreation of what I saw when I was passing my boss's desk

When I was a kid, my father straight up did not understand transient preferences in food. If you ever expressed that you would prefer not to have a particular food today, he universally interpreted that as meaning you hated it now and never wanted to have it ever again; he went through life firmly convinced that everyone around him was crazy because they were constantly flip-flopping between loving and hating certain foods without rhyme or reason, which led to some fascinating meal planning challenges.

So I've seen the post going around that's kind of like "kids should be able to read whatever they want and not have their choices censored by adults" and I largely agree with one caveat which is that children need to be able to opt in. I remember being 12 and sneaking some dirty books, and being interested and excited to read a book with something more sexy in it, and no one died, and everything was fine, and I was not forever scarred. However I do remember being shown a a horror film at seven by a babysitter and not being able to sleep for three weeks, and if I'd known how scary the movie was I wouldn't have wanted to watch it.

Apparently the dude who runs the crematorium is just fundamentally confused about how advertising works. He actually thought that the way you made an ad was you found a picture that got people’s attention … and then also included information about your company. He was genuinely surprised and baffled when people thought there was any relationship between the (independently nonsensical) captioned image and his cremation business. There were two more ads in the series that are equally, just… so much…

“I was just trying to get people to stop for a second and see the picture, and then my company’s name. That was it,” Oliver King tells the Riverfront Times. “The two are not supposed to be related, except that’s my daughter and my company.”