MISTER frankenstein was a punk ass bitch

And when the Blip-A has been gone twice as long as it should have been with no indication of what happened to them, when the astrophage has been attacking Erid’s sun for 50 years and they are starting to feel the pressure of its effects, when the Tau Ceti plan looks like a failure and the whole crew aboard has been assumed dead and they need to figure out something else… Eridian governments approach Adrian’s dome habitat team with the serious question of how much of the Eridian population could feasibly be moved into climate controlled geothermally-powered xenonite dome cities. (The answer is inevitably “not enough.” But the debates over sending a second crew to Tau Ceti in case what happened to the Blip-A was a weird fluke are not finding any consensus and the planet is snowballing towards total climate collapse and the world is ending and Adrian is bitterly glad that they and Rocky never had children because what kind of future is even left—)

Wow you did not have to build me such a big enclosure. This is massive and that is just what I can see from my bedroom window.

^tags from @bwabbitv3s

While I love and greatly enjoy all the adorable fics, art and headcanons about Rocky, Adrian and Grace forming a little family unit together... I strongly doubt that Eridians have any real concept of the nuclear family.

The thing is that nuclear families (family units consisting of a married couple and any kids they have) are a relatively modern and largely Western invention; for most of human history and in most parts of the world households have been larger and involved extended family members, tending more towards clans than individual units.

Notably, this is also more common in more collectivist societies- and Eridians are supposed to be even more collectivist in nature than humans are.

Eridians make major decisions by joining together in large groups that form a single consciousness.

They need to watch each other sleep on an irregular timeline, which would be wildly impractical with two people who aren't stuck on a tiny spaceship together, and instead have jobs and obligations outside the home.

They traditionally stored food from hunting in large communal piles.

In the movie Rocky has a family crest that he uses to introduce himself, indicating a major focus on family/clan as a part of identity.

James Ortiz's headcanon about arranged marriage also fits, since those usually happen in societies that view marriage as a union between families, rather than between individuals.

All of this points to Eridians living together in large groups joined by kinship, and potentially friendship as well. They have many adults in the home that all support the family, watch each other sleep, and come together to make important decisions. And this family identity is an important part of how they see themselves and their purpose in the world.

And then there's the issue of Eridian reproduction.

When you put together that Eridians lay five eggs at a time, that they live for centuries, and that egg laying is easier than giving birth, you're looking at one Eridian mating pair having up to five kids at minimum, and dozens at maximum. Maybe in the past it evened out due to child mortality, but assuming they've largely solved that with modernity it's a recipe for massive, unsustainable population growth.

I've seen several fan explanations for this, but for me the simplest is that Eridians just don't put as much emphasis on individual couples having children as humans do. Each family generation is probably quite large, but only a couple kids in that generation will choose to have children of their own, and then those children will be raised by the family, It-Takes-a-Village style.

It's similar to how it was an evolutionary benefit for human families to have single, gay and elderly members: including childless adults increases chances of survival for the children the family does have. And quintuplets have gotta be a lot for one couple to handle, even with Eridian multi-tasking abilities.

If I can get even more out there, considering the collectivist nature of Eridians and the relatively detached method of laying eggs vs. childbirth/nursing, it's entirely possible that Eridians don't actually put that much stock in who a child's biological parents are. There are human societies that historically reckoned kinship similarly, referring to some or all aunts/uncles as parents, and cousins as siblings.

All of which is to say that again, large and tight-knit extended families are very likely the default for most Eridians.

And oh boy, the implications this has for the story!

Imagine Ryland "No close family, no friends, not even a dog" Grace, arriving at Erid to discover that he has not only been adopted by Rocky's mate but by his entire, massive family as well.

Imagine Rocky's relatives, many of whom are likely also engineers, working to maintain Grace's dome. Because that's what you do for family, and any family of Rocky's is one of theirs.

Imagine Rocky and Adrian having a clutch and Grace getting ready to be an uncle only to discover he is 100% considered a parent too.

Imagine this lonely, isolated person having a huge support system for the rest of his life.

Usually, I appreciate English for its artistic freedom, the way it lets you play with words. I love that the word “breakage” is a thing, I love that you can turn any body part into a verb by slapping “to” in front of it and then getting a little nasty, et cetera. It is rare that I actually complain about words English doesn’t have. Famously, I grieve for “Guten Appetit”, the German version of “bon appetit” that exists in many languages in some way, but not in English. Earlier today, I was complaining to my spouse, not for the first time, about the lack of direct translation for “Treppenhaus”. The literal translation is stair house, and the internet is currently telling me that “stairwell” is the English word I’m looking for. I guess it is translatable, then. That’s fine, this was all just supposed to be a lead-up to another word anyway, one that really doesn’t have a proper English translation:

Feierabend!

Clunky English translations include closing time, quitting time, but also after-hours, off-hours, and of course the clunkiest, end of the work day.

So, the first question burning on my mind is:

Feierabend is a genuinely important part of German culture, and a treasured word among many of us. It is so salient that there is a BBC article about it. So what’s it mean?

Well,

Discovered last year I couldn’t look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.

Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.

-And I couldn’t spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.

Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.

And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and I’m still dealing with a vertigo migraine.

For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.

And it’s not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. There’s even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that won’t trigger eyestrain and headaches.

So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.