Enter the fire

Venus Beeswax Candle from ARolenartform

I was thinking the other day that it obviously really sucks when game devs get super crunched to deliver these tiny little things that have no overall impact on the game outside of “look how realistic this is!” (stuff like the TLoU2′s hose physics or Red Dead Redemption’s realtime horse ball changes) but it is a double whammy that no other game studio gets to make use of that. If they want to have those hose physics (because hey TLoU2 did it!) they have to reinvent the wheel and waste all this time that’s already been squeezed out of devs at another studio.

I know everyone knows the whole “capitalism breeds innovation” line is bull but can you imagine if these studios didn’t have an economic incentive to run each other into the ground and instead just wanted to make the best and coolest games they could? If game devs freely shared their code and knowledge? Can you imagine how instantly and dramatic the quality of all new games would go up, and how much better the devs lives would be?

Hell, even studios that aren’t under these crushing practices could have reciprocal benefits: there’s a bunch of studios that would love to just have something like Yakuza’s dragon engine, they could make some kick ass games with that, and there’s almost certainly devs that could optimize the engine and make it even better for the Ryu Ga Gotoku devs 

literally every information based industry would benefit from open collaboration. I work in IT on routers primarily, and every time a competitor comes out with some new feature it’s on our tiny dev team to try to replicate that as fast as possible, and the reverse if we make something new. That’s literally pointless work. It benefits nobody, the feature already exists, if we were all trying to make the best routers then we wouldn’t be doubling (and tripling and quadrupling and so on because literally every other competitor has to do the same thing) up on this work and could instead actually innovate new things that meaningfully improve the product

healthcare, sciences, technology, manufacturing, literally anything that makes money off of being able to do something better/smarter/cheaper/more than someone else would be better off without capitalism

Anthropology major answer: “There absolutely was such a time! Modern humans and our ancestors shared territory numerous times over prehistory with cousin species like homo neanderthalensis, homo floresiensis, and many, many others!” 

Folklore student answer: “Also, almost all cultures have something like djinn, faeries, hulder, fox spirits, and other similar creatures who can appear at least human and are very, very dangerous to humans!” 

Both of these things are true, and may be connected both to the above and to each other. :D

Biology majors: it’s dead bodies guys. Corpses.

Listen I hate this take on the uncanny valley so fucking much because many subpsecies of homonids lived in the same areas but some of them got along well enough to coexist and neandertals had enough desirable genetic traits to the point where human women (see here for a blanket on female vs male choosiness) would often pass up incel homosepian for the chad neandertal.

Genetics aside, various hominid species didn’t start visually looking all that different until 50,000 years ago, while under the skin changes began as early as 89,000 years ago (ie the development of the Y chromosome but I might be oversimplifying at this point) Point being, even our non-human cousins didn’t. look. that. different. from. us. Especially comparing the diversifying of humans themselves crossing trans continental as it was. And even then neandertals still had advantagious traits for living in the Eurasian hemisphere.

Also I digress, regardless of it being intentional, and with few perserved records from that chapter in our species’ history, I don’t like the implication that the uncanny valley effect stems from humans being inherently racist (for lack of a word for hatred of non-human intelligences). I know that sounds off the wall but prejudice and sense of superiority by birthright is vastly different than othering by means of the sucess of social groups and the need to compete for territory or resources. Racism is entirely a Eurpean fabrication and it’s been proven time and time again to be a cultural outlier and purposfully designed to further the agenda of corroded theocratical religious divinity (here, here, here) and the financial benifits of the exploitation of colonism that otherwise has not been replicated by other cultures to the same degree. (this is the only example off the top of my head but I’m know there’s more.)

You know what’s older than racism?

You know what’s more flesh crawling than neandertals?

fucking rabies

You know what LOOKS like a human but doesn’t ACT human ENOUGH? Do you know what might bite you and get you sick or turn you into something that also moves about in a non human way? Brain parasites that give you painful headaches and intensifies agression and confusion.

Say you’re a monkey and one member of your troop gets bitten by something. Later he starts twitching and swaying about. He keeps stumbling out of trees but barely feels anything when he hits the ground. He won’t eat sleep or drink. He makes guttural noises that keep alerting predators and he’s in obvious writhing agony. Suddenly he’s not your friend anymore. He doesn’t recognize you and he attempts to bite and claw at anything that moves.

Up until preventitive oral medications and vaccines were developed in the 1970s there was NOTHING stopping rabies and it still prevails today and kills hundreds of thousands of people in third world countries with limited medical resources a year. There’s no cure for rabies once youve got it and the only reliable diagnostic is a brain autopsy.

Rabies. TB. Leoprosy. Syphilis. Meningitis. Toxoplasmosis. Anthrax. Mercury Poisoning. Prion disease. These are all bad and in different varying degrees can cause limps, sores, agression, confusion or dazed trances, ambled pacing, convulsions or uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Basically everything that people are terrified of when it comes to zombies. Vampires bite. Werewolves rip people apart. Demonic possesion? Easy. Changlings take the place of your loved ones.

Also I don’t think that it’s a conicidence that the things we find uncomfortable with the uncanny valley also just happen to line up with predatory behavior, smiling too wide or staring you down, blinking too slowly or moving towards you with a slow steady speed. It’s just a danger signal to keep other monkeys in a troop from getting bitten by an infected monkey. Simple as that.

After all what’s scarier? A dead body, or moving body that will MAKE you dead?

I’m not going to be a hypocrite by pointing out racism being excused as a stemmed human behavior without claiming that the deep seated primal fear of disease doesn’t make a good excuse for ableism as well. I mean we use othering to discern friend from foe, and then at some point decided that was a good enough excuse for racism. Theres legitimate proof that ancient homonids could and would be hospitible to the disabled out of compassion. The point of having these initial fears is to guage saftey measures first, but once someone or something is proven to be harmless that normally should be the end of it. I mean if an adult wild silverback gorrilla can look at a spycam and decide it’s chill after a moment of inspection then there’s really no excuse for any of us.

Healthy othering =/= newly invented racism.

healthy fear of infectious diseases =/= excuse to hate disabled people.

But yeah rabies is more likely the reason for the uncanny valley effect thanks for coming to my goddamn ted talk.

Reblogging this version bc of sources and I personally think this makes for much more interesting (and terrifying) lore than any other post in this thread.

Trash Bandit steals hearts; That and the Weather at 11 #EthicalMemes

If you’re into sea shanties, may I present:

Unmute !

For those who can’t see/hear:

The video opens a door to an outside industrial plant-like area. Snow is on the ground and there is otherwise some miscellaneous noise of factory work going on.

Then the person behind the camera lets off an “OooOOO AH AH” ie the typical monkey sound.

Suddenly the air is filled with the cries of the humans imitating this monkey sound. No one is seen this entire time. You just hear the cries of people imitating monkeys.

Me @ myself anytime I open my mouth:

This is reminder to check up on your own mental health.

OK thanks

i know “go be in the Trees and your depression will be fixed” is bullshit. but honestly i think a lot of things would be a little better if we spent more time with things like dirt and small streams and leaves. when you’re inside it’s easy to forget how raw and elementally wondrous the world is. how many colors there are and types of crunches that leaves make, and how many living things. how many things have smells and how different they all are.

It’s really like, youll see a large flock of birds take flight with a FWOOM of wings exploding all at once and it’s like. this is the largest emotion I have ever felt

Transphobes can die mad 🤷🏻

A closer look because these ladies deserve to be appreciated 💓

I hate this place