I'M DOING AN EXPERIMENT

Capitalism requires continual growth in a closed system. In biology this is typically a virus or cancer.

Sometimes keeping things at the suitable size in equilibrium with the environment is the best way. But these people have been trained into capitalism requiring growth and always needing more.

Stick to your small businesses and I'll keep trying to go to the small independent places to buy things.

My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

Jngyi loved teaching humans. Truly. Most of them were problematic in their own ways, but he loved being able to help shape them into beings that wouldn’t destroy the galaxy. One of his favorite lessons was teaching humans that sometimes there was no way to ‘fix’ something. Humans needed that lesson. They tried to fix everything, and sometimes made things much worse.

Jngyi gave his students the task of ‘terraforming a planet for habitation’. The goal was to give students a planet that could not be terraformed so they would admit the planet is undesirable and thus accept defeat. Most of the time, even humans would admit a planet would require too much money or effort to change or that attempting terraformation would damage the planet beyond survivability. Ganix was the planet assigned to the more stubborn or supercilious students.

The planet Ganix is unsuitable for life, any life. Most of the planet’s surface is covered in black water, both colored and contaminated by the ash of overactive underwater volcanoes. The excessive ash in the water choked any wildlife that had the misfortune of trying to live there.

What land exists isn’t even dry, instead covered in large patches of marsh. The three seasons observable from a safe distance fluctuate so quickly and harshly that these marshes freeze over and melt in a matter of days, effectively destroying any flora that tries to survive.

While it’s hard to call anything a ‘flood’ when the planet is mostly water to begin with, the tides still completely cover what little land exists when the lunar cycle reaches perigee for a full day every standard two weeks. The climate is no easier to deal with. Rain carrying enough ash to coat the ground, ice falling like rocks, or the excessive heat that accompanies the ‘dry spells’.

The planet isn’t even able to be terraformed as the unstable tectonic plates would fracture and cause even more geological disasters. Which is exactly why Ganix had been classified as uninhabitable and used only as a way point for those whose nav systems broke down.

Jngyi felt very confident that Millie, Elan, Rene, and Brenden, his four most human students, would come to the same conclusion.

The report Rene handed in for the group was over 20 pages long.

“This is quite the long report for what should be a very short sentence,” Jngyi stated.

“What do you mean a short sentence? Just setting up appropriate farm land takes up three of those pages. Elan wanted to write five but we convinced her to shorten it down.”

Jngyi quickly scanned his eyes down the first page of the report. “In our research, we have discovered terraforming in its current meaning is not required for habitation. What do you mean?”

Rene glanced at Millie, who nodded encouragement.

“Well, we don’t believe you need to alter the planet to adjust its climate or structure in order to live there. We believe that it’s possible to adapt to the circumstances available with a little bit of outside supplies.”

Jngyi slapped the report down on his desk. “The assignment was meant to make you admit defeat, not write nonsense to make you sound clever.”

Brenden stepped forward next to Rene. “We didn’t make up stuff! Everything in the report you haven’t bothered to read yet will work.”

Jngyi stared at the upset boy. “You cannot be thriving members of the galaxy if you cannot admit you are incapable of something. Ganix cannot be terraformed. The last attempt at it is what set off the underwater volcanoes to begin with. It is beyond repair and thus is not sustainable for life.”

“Well we say you’re wrong,” Brenden fired back.

Jngyi tried to remember that these were children, mentally unformed and unable to refrain from stubbornness and stupidity. “It is not just me. You’re saying the galaxy is wrong. You’re saying that you four know more than every species, human included, who’s tried to live there before. Even you must see how-“

Millie cut in. “What if they are?”

Jngyi paused to let the eager child’s words register. “What if what? What if the entire galaxy is wrong? How can you ask that?”

“You always teach us that the galaxy is always changing and it’s important to adapt. Well, what if this is another change just waiting to happen? What if they’re wrong?” Millie reasoned.

Jngyi shook his head. “It’s not the same thing. I’m sorry, but you’ve failed this assignment.”

Brenden started to say something, but Rene spoke up faster.

“Will you please read the report before making a final decision? You might change your mind.”

“Fine. I will read the report. But tomorrow the grade will be submitted.”

The four humans left Jngyi to read in quiet.

Jngyi put off reading the report until after dinner. He regretted that decision when he reached page two and had to start contacting other experts. Jngyi knew some earth history, but floating gardens and sun shades and buoyant cities were beyond his working knowledge. Certainly his students had done their research.

By the time the four humans regrouped in his class, Jngyi had a virtual group of his own. Experts in survival, plant growth, microbiology, construction, watercraft, and climate all watched the students enter the class. Each expert had their own copy of the report, along with their own research on the planet itself.

“Prof J, what’s going on here?” Brenden asked.

“Your plan is insane, arduous, possibly nugatory, but it may be viable all the same. I’ve gathered together some experts to question your tactics. If they agree that this could work, they will add their expanded knowledge to your concepts and we will submit this to the terraformation council for further review. If you do well today, this could well allow all four of you entrance to whichever field of study you desire after basic schooling.”

Jngyi motioned for the children to sit down at their seats. Each desk had their report and a pad to pull up more research during the debate.

“If you need a moment to ready yourself, please take it. We begin in fifteen minutes.”

——————————————

Deidre, the expert human on the terraformation committee, looked up from her itinerary. “Hey Kleri, why is Ganix on the schedule for the next meeting? I thought this planet had been deemed unlivable a long time ago?”

Aide Kleri nodded. “Yes Madam Deidre, you are correct.”

“Has something changed?”

“Apparently some teenage humans received the planet as a homework assignment.”

Deidre laughed, cutting off whatever else Aide Kleri would have said. Kleri waited until Deidre calmed down.

“Madam Deidre, why is that funny?”

“Because Kleri, there is nothing worse than a human teenager with a good idea.”

I play what we've named "cinematic D&D" which is basically collaborative story telling. There's one person assigned "storyteller" and each of the others are characters. The storyteller sets the scene, builds the world (or easier, borrows an existing world, eg. LOTR, Witcher, Blade, etc.). You then play in the same way: 1. storyteller describes the situation. 2. players describe what their character does. 3. storyteller describes what happens.

After you play a bit the story will flow. It's a really great, creative way to pass some time. It also helps if you treat it as cooperation rather than adversaries, even if the storyteller is "being" the adversaries. What I mean by this is not to block the other person's ideas, to accept & include them and ultimately make a good story. This applies to everyone, not just storytellers.

What's the longest/your favourite fanfic you've written?

I've never posted any fics anywhere, actually. I generally just get on discord and type out extremely long-winded character & dialogue scenarios for my friends to live-react to, hahaha. I guess I love the "audience." It's especially fun because they get to provide input along the way, like "okay wait but what if [x charcter] responded like this..." It's like I'm the narrator giving them occasional dialogue options, ha. I had a lot of fun doing a pretty self indulgent tenth doctor au the other month, and right now I'm enjoying "writing" about the BG3 cast along with my friends' player characters. I do have a Geralt x Reader fic sitting in a Google doc right now that I may one day post, god willing and the creek don't rise. We'll see.

From what I understand, they didn't "bring back" the dire wolf, which went extinct 10,000 years ago. What they did was mutated a grey wolf and grew pups who have exactly the same genome as the long extinct dire wolf.

This does beg the question how much does it matter if they are actually linearly related, if they have the same genetics?

Of course as Jurassic park pointed out, this is not exactly a great idea. We don't have the ecosystems that support a creature with those genetics any more.

Lol. Lmao even

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you're welcome

I'm pretty upset, angry and scared at the moment. The government has gone out of its way to harm trans rights in the UK. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64288757

The peel perhaps could protect the wizard from any other pineapples. It might be defensive and territorial.

hate how all these apocalyptic films show society breaking down the hot minute the grid goes down, with all the survivors banding off into tiny violent gangs that prey on each other.

bitch you are a member of one of the most social species in existence! it is actually insane the extent to which humans have evolved to use cooperation as our main survival tool. humans have been building and then rebuilding societies for as long as disasters have been bringing them down. an apocalypse would be fucking awful, but the survivors would end up building communities and networks and pooling resources and knowledge, because that's what humans do. that's what they DO!!!