Fan girl, anyone?

from a red dwarf that appears to be older than the universe, to supermassive black holes forming way too early in the universe, to a supermassive black hole speeding across the universe (what kind of energy could have possibly been used to fling something of that mass at that speed?), to dark matter and dark energy apparently existing but refusing to show themselves, to quantum mechanics and general relativity not getting along despite being our two most reliable theories of physics experimentally, to the weird coincidence that any detector capable of detecting a graviton would have to be so massive it would collapse into a black hole (in fact, exactly massive enough to do so).

a number of these were known facts in the 20th century, but so many of them have built up since then that is throwing our neat little models of everything into chaos. WHICH IS AMAZING, BECAUSE IT MEANS THAT SCIENTISTS CAN NOW MAKE NEW THEORIES ABOUT HOW THINGS WORK BASED ON THE RAPIDLY EMERGING DATA!

Here's something that fucked with me today:

Everybody looks different.

That's it.

That's how this started.

I was looking at people and realized...

how the hell are there this many faces?

Same basic equipment.

Eyes.

Nose.

Mouth.

Ears.

Forehead.

Nature has been working with approximately six fucking Legos for hundreds of thousands of years...

and somehow you can still walk through an airport containing 4,000 human beings and immediately spot:

MOM.

One face.

Among thousands.

No scanner.

No name tag.

No conscious measurements.

Your brain just goes:

HER.

And you keep walking like nothing supernatural just happened.

THEN I STARTED THINKING ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE WE DON'T FIND STRANGE ANYMORE.

YOU BREATHE RAW AIR

RAW.

Think about that.

You leave your house and just...

inhale the outdoors.

No helmet.

No filtration system.

No atmospheric seal.

No little green indicator saying:

EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT COMPATIBLE WITH HUMAN RESPIRATORY SYSTEM.

You don't even think about it.

Open door.

Walk outside.

Planet goes directly into lungs.

Meanwhile, put your ass on Mars and breathing becomes a NASA budget.

Here?

Some dude is standing outside a Dollar General smoking a Newport while complaining about the humidity.

That's how compatible he is with the fucking planet.

He's intentionally making the air WORSE before breathing it.

YOUR EYEBALLS ARE REMOTE SENSORS

This might be the one we've disrespected the most.

You can know what's happening somewhere...

without going there.

Something happens 300 feet away.

You don't touch it.

You don't hear it.

You don't smell it.

Light bounces off the event...

flies across space...

hits your eyeball...

and your brain goes:

“Oh shit.”

That's fucking surveillance.

Built into your skull.

You can drive a car because two squishy organs filled with fluid continuously intercept photons and construct a moving model of reality quickly enough that you don't plow into a mailbox.

Most days.

And distance barely ruins the trick.

Tree across the street?

See it.

Mountain twenty miles away?

See it.

Moon?

See it.

Fucking STAR?

Yep.

Your eyeball will accept information that crossed the universe before your ancestors had surnames.

Then you'll use that same eyeball to stare into the refrigerator for nine minutes because apparently mustard might turn into food if you check again.

AND THEN THERE'S LANGUAGE

This one is borderline witchcraft.

I can put something in your head.

Watch.

PURPLE GIRAFFE WEARING ORTHOPEDIC SHOES.

There.

You saw that stupid bastard.

I never showed you a picture.

There is no giraffe.

There are no shoes.

I moved my fingers around...

created symbols...

you recognized the symbols...

and now something that existed in MY imagination exists in YOURS.

Tell me that isn't fucking telepathy.

We just gave it grammar and stopped being impressed.

Talking is even more primitive.

I have a thought.

My lungs push air through my throat.

Meat vibrates.

My tongue flops around.

Invisible pressure waves leave my face.

They enter holes in the side of your skull.

Tiny bones shake.

Your brain decodes the shaking.

And suddenly you know:

“This motherfucker wants tacos.”

We call this:

conversation.

Aliens would call it:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING?

EVEN PEOPLE ARE WEIRD

You know other minds exist.

Really think about that.

You're trapped inside your own skull.

You've never experienced consciousness from anywhere else.

You cannot climb inside another person and verify that somebody is home.

Yet you look into two eyes...

watch a mouth twitch...

hear three words...

and somehow know:

She's embarrassed.

He's lying.

She's trying not to laugh.

That dude wants to leave.

We spend our entire lives communicating with consciousnesses we can never directly access...

and become so good at it that somebody can text:

“I'm fine.”

and you immediately know:

Oh fuck.

MAYBE NOTHING BECOMES ORDINARY

Maybe we just become anesthetized by repetition.

That's the thought that got me.

Because almost everything becomes miraculous again the moment it stops working.

Air?

Boring.

Until you can't breathe.

Eyes?

Whatever.

Until you can't see.

Walking?

Who cares?

Until your legs won't cooperate.

Someone's voice?

Background noise.

Until they're gone.

Then you'd trade damn near anything to hear them say something completely insignificant again.

“Did you take the trash out?”

“Yeah.”

That's it.

That's the miracle you didn't know you were standing inside.

And suddenly I wonder whether this is what human beings actually mean when we call something normal.

Not:

“Unremarkable.”

Maybe normal means:

A MIRACLE WITH PERFECT ATTENDANCE.

It showed up yesterday.

It showed up today.

So you stopped thanking it for coming.

That's fucking dangerous.

Because your life is absolutely crawling with impossible-looking shit.

Self-repairing flesh.

Dreams.

Memory.

Music.

Orgasm.

Faces.

Language.

Laughter.

The ability to close your eyes in one location and wake up eight hours later having experienced an entire world that never existed.

We haven't even gotten to LOVE.

Two temporary biological organisms somehow become so important to each other that one would willingly die so the other temporary biological organism gets a few more years.

WHAT?

And we write Valentine's cards about it like that explains anything.

Maybe aliens don't need to arrive.

Maybe God doesn't need to rip open the sky.

Maybe reality doesn't owe us another miracle.

Maybe we've already been given so fucking many that the human nervous system did the only thing it could do to remain functional:

It stopped noticing.

Tomorrow morning you'll wake up.

Light will enter your eyes.

A world will appear.

You'll recognize faces.

You'll inhale a planet.

You'll exchange invisible thoughts with other minds.

You'll remember people who aren't currently there.

You'll manipulate objects using five little articulated branches attached to each arm.

You'll walk around on a spinning rock without feeling it move.

And you'll probably spend part of the morning thinking:

“Nothing interesting ever happens to me.”

HAHAHAHA.

Look at us.

Standing knee-deep in fucking sorcery...

waiting for something weird to happen.

More inappropriate primate anthropology:

https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence

Support Mr. Humble's continuing investigation into why humanity can catch starlight with wet eyeballs but still needs three trips to the refrigerator to confirm there's nothing to eat:

https://patreon.com/TheMostHumble

M'lady, you may have anything you can carry.

"Pinhole Camera" Eclipse Effect !

listening to CDs in the kitchen i always brace myself for the ad between songs but then it just keeps rolling. skipping around how i like without interruption feels heavenly. we're in such a commercial angst prison that books and CDs are luxury now 😭

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