"Many Species Of Polychaetes Undergo Epitoky Whereby Sexually Immature Worms Transform Into Pelagic Morphs

I low-key love the fact that sci-fi has so conditioned us to expect to be hanging out with a bunch of cool space aliens, that legitimate, actual scientists keep proposing the most bizarre, three-blunts-into-the-rotation "theories" to explain the fact we're not.

Some of my favourites include:

Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)

Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?

Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?

Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!

Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?

The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.

So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:

Humanity is a guy standing in the middle of a field at midnight. It's pitch black, he can't move, and he's been standing there for ages. He's just had the thought to swing his arms. He swings one of his arms, once, and does not hit another person. "Oh no!" He says. "Robots have killed them all!"

the hadron collider is like an angel to me

One’s regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him

Why Are Rich People So Anxious?

I drew a little something for the Hiveworks micro comic summer~

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Hiveworks Comics

It's time! Today is the day. Share the comic you've been working on all summer with the tag #MicroComicSummer

It’s not hard to see parallels between the three dimensions of perfectionism and so-called “call-out culture,” lately the hegemonic tendency on the Left: a condition in which everyone watches everyone else for a fatal slip-up, holding themselves to impossibly high standards of virtuous self-effacement, and being paralyzed with the secret (again, not unfounded) fear that they’re disposable to the group, that their judgment day is around the corner. The pattern is of a piece with other manifestations of neoliberal meritocratic perfectionism, from college admissions to obsessive Instagram curation. And because it divides rather than unites us, it’s no way to build a movement that ostensibly seeks to strike at the heart of power.

Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss

art in architecture // wien leopoldstadt

II

part 2 of art in architecture in leopoldstadt, vienna. and again a mix of modern and traditional formal language, executed as sculpture, mosaic or sgraffito. sometimes the artworks refer to biblical themes (weintraubengasse), local handicrafts (große pfarrgasse) or history, such as former buildings or residents (rotensterngasse & czerniengasse).

1. weintraubengasse artist: f. barzig, d.j.

2. zirkusgasse

3. große pfargasse

4. rotensterngasse

5. czerniengasse (completion 1962) artist: k.drexler

Two decades of conspiracy theorizing about the extent to which 9/11 was an "inside job" have revealed no all-encompassing sinister secrets or grand plots except the least exciting smoking gun of all: that terrorism and mass death are a feature, not a bug. The creation, financing, support, control, and loss of control of terrorist groups has been one of the key weapons in the arsenal of american imperialism since the 1970s. The "inside job" is that the cycle of murder is intentional even if the individual events may not be.

The fact that the US intelligence apparatus runs a constant treadmill of funding governments and organizations to topple their enemies that then in turn need to be fought by more US-funded client states and terror groups is not a failure of foreign policy, or a shadowy conspiracy by some deep state, it's simply how foreign policy works in modern empire. It works for them! Look to Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Panama, the post-Soviet states. Every butchering leader or violent radical cadre that turns from a help to a hindrance to the USA becomes yet another opportunity for the exercise of force and the continued operation of the military-industrial-intelligence complex.

You don't need thermite or holographic planes or insurance fraud or budgetary coverups to explain the simple fact that if the USA is willing to accept millions of dead in the imperial periphery as the basic digestive process in the ourobouros that is imperial power-dealing, then a couple thousand dead in the imperial core is at worst a regrettable hiccup, and at best an unexpected twist, a chance to take another bite, a new opportunity to launch yet more destructive adventures abroad, which will in turn cause their own crises and opportunities, on and on circularly forever until the whole thing collapses or is brought down by force.