Pans Narrans 🐒

“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Science of Discworld II: The Globe

[catchymemes]

[that-catholic-shinobi]

This is the funniest thing i’ve heard my entire life 😭

[xxleondraxx]

Truth xD

[burntcopper]

This is literally me as a kid.  Dad used to have the responsibility of giving out the well reports that came in on the friday night to anyone who phoned for the rest of the weekend.  The problem was, on saturday mornings, he was doing the food shopping, so I was given a list of approved callers and he’d leave the well report figures by the phone.

Theoretically I was just supposed to list off the numbers.  Except. Very early I started parsing the figures and give my own analysis.  Apparently engineers and geophysicists got a bit freaked out by a ten year old going ‘It’s not that good, the flow’s really slow compared to last week, and there’s gas pockets really screwing up the flow in the east pipe judging by the pressure report.’

Dad still got that yelled at him at conferences: ‘This is the fucker who used child labour to do well analysis!’

‘Was it wrong?’

‘That’s the not the point!’

[greater-than-the-sword]

We found him- the 20 year old with 10 years experience

[elucubrare]

i know why people don't like the trope of revenge leaving you empty, but i love it, and I think it's because i love pretty much any permutation of "i've accomplished the great Goal and now what? i'm still the same person who set it, still me, but now i've lost the central thing that drove me onwards to greatness"

[elucubrare]

I also love mercy as a greater show of dominance than actually going through with the final blow - you've shown you can defeat them and now they have to live with the fact that you have them in your power

[elucubrare]

i just want to say that everyone reading the second part especially as about "forgiveness" or "healing" or whatever is a much nicer person than me, I'm talking about besting them, having them at your feet, and letting them crawl away, making them understand not only that they've lost but that if they try to stand in your way again you will let that final blow fall.

[valtsv]

i LOVE the idea of "i can't win, but you can lose" in fictional confrontations it is SO fucking tasty. the human nature to self destruct and the human nature to survive by any means necessary combined at its finest.

[funnytwittertweets]

[aegissi]

no talking stage I pull u towards me by our red string of fate and then we kiss on the mouth

[onlyonekenobi]

INFORMATION I WAS NOT PREPARED TO LEARN. MAYBE WE *ARE* ALONE. BECAUSE WE ARE SO *EARLY*. IF THERE IS EVER GALACTIC CIVILIZATION THEY WILL NOT REMEMBER US AT ALL. BECAUSE WE ARE NOTHING. CELLS, JUST BEGINNING TO FORM LIFE. SORRY FOR SCREAMING. BUT ARE YOU LISTENING. ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT IT.

[lesbiankiliel]

[nevertheless-moving]

trying to think of a witty pithy way to describe how shook I'm in but I'm really sitting here too shook

Y'all. Y'ALL. DO Y'ALL REALIZE WHAT THIS MEANS?? It means that WE get to be the ancients that galactic civilization stumbles upon the ruins of. This - THIS PLANET RIGHT HERE is destined to become the Origin World of the Old Ones.

The Ones who seeded throughout the cosmsos, if not life (though many scholars suspect they left life behind too, with reckless abandon or perhaps ineffable widsom, we can never know), if not life at the very least language, tools, monuments to science - the foundations upon which a thousand thousand races build their stairways to the stars, their starways to eachother.

And how wondrous it is to not be alone in the cosmos, and how under it all, the petty conflicts and the horrors, how thankful we are to not be alone, how thankful we are for the First, the All Parents, the Seed Spreaders, The Road Makers (a thousand thousand names for those who first laid the paths through the stars).

And at the far edge of it all, a planet formed before the galactic disks colided, preserved by lost arts from the dying struggles of the cold black dwarf it still orbits. And on that world an intrepid galactic explorer would, yes, find monuments and technologies not dreamed of by even the wildest anachroastrohistorians.

But they would also find handprints in stasis. and what can only be toys - for children, they had children. Art and scars from unfathomably ancient wars and writings that when decoded can only be names and jokes. Jokes - the Ancient Ones told jokes. They carved their name in high places, for a billion billion years they were, and - and they were people.

They were like us.

They were like us and we are like them and we aren't alone because of them, and I wish they could know that even though they must have felt alone (oh they must have felt so alone, the early ones)

I wish I could tell them that we aren't alone because of them then, and now they aren't alone because of us.

[kiwifluid]

there needs to be an easier way to convey the idea of "it's absolutely fine that you don't like this thing I like, and I don't even necessarily disagree with your reasons for disliking it, but I am sick to death of hearing your negative opinions about it."

[avatardoggo]

op what you just said is 1000% perfect that’s exactly how you say it

[average-smoothie-enjoyer]

My favorite “humans are space orcs” idea is that trope where aliens kidnap some humans for their zoo, except it ends up like Jurassic Park. And the poor Alien Humanologists who were invited to the park are like:

“You mean you locked up a pack of curious, highly competitive persistence predators with NO enrichment in the enclosure? You FOOLS! If you had bothered to throw a basketball or half a box of Legos in there, KE-X9 would still be alive!

“Well of course they climbed the retaining wall! Did you think to study their evolutionary lineage AT ALL?”

[what-even-is-thiss]

The humans would find a way to use the basketball and legos to escape. I mean one time a guy somehow escaped from a prison in Mexico without breaking any laws so his escape would be legal so honestly given enough time the Jurassic park situation is inevitable.

[elidyce]

Jurassic Park would be awesome, but now that I think about it I also kind of love love the idea of humans as the alien zoo equivalent of those octopuses that climb out of their tanks and wander around taste-testing other exhibits or throwing sub-par shrimp at handlers. 

Like they’re totally unable to figure out what’s happening because the cameras keep going out, but every night things get moved, or stolen, exhibits are disappearing, WHAT IS GOING ON, they’ve moved facilities twice and it’s still happening, are they haunted, are the ancestors angry, WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

And then a weary humanologist is all ‘… your humans are getting out’. 

“That is impossible.” 

“They’re getting out.” 

“That enclosure is COMPLETELY SECURE.” 

“And yet somehow they’re getting out.” 

“THE HUMANS ARE NOT GETTING OUT.” 

“Oh yeah? I bet you twenty glarks they’re getting out. Stay after closing time with me and I’ll show you.” 

*next day*

“… the humans were getting out.” 

“… why did they keep going back in, then?!”

(In a deeply embarrassed mumble) “They said they weren’t going to escape until they finished their behavioural experiments. Uh. On us.”

[thefoxconfessor]

the characters of seinfeld could kill the characters of friends with their bare hands

[thefoxconfessor]

i think we should give elaine a crowbar and lock her in a room with ross just to see what happens

[wufflesvetinari]

the thing about lotr that the movies don’t convey so fully is how the story is set in an age heavily overshadowed by all the ages before. they’re constantly traveling through ruins, discussing the glory of days gone by, the empires of men are much diminished, the elves (especially galadriel) are described as seeming incongruent, frozen in time….some of the imagery is even near-apocalyptic, like the ruins of moria and of course the landscape surrounding mordor

this is a strange thought to me, somehow: that the archetypal “high fantasy” story is set at the point where the…fantasy…used to be much higher? this is not the golden age; this is a remnant

[myjetpack]

My cartoon for this week’s @Guardian

p.s. There is a new collection of my literary cartoons coming out soon: tomgauld.com

[hellogirls]

normalize being in your 20's without a drivers license. normalize being in your 60's without a drivers license. normalize never ever getting your license. death to automobiles peace and love on planet earth

[futuresabove]

“how to read more” “how to read faster” “how to read daily” STOP STOP stop STOP this is not a competition. read slowly, read when you’re in the right state of mind, really savour it, read for pleasure, read for yourself. don’t read for performance, stats or to compare yourself to others

[anexperimentallife]

[jurassic-cunt]

this whole “job thing” is rlly starting to get in my way. i need to watch made up people falling in love on tv, and then i need to read more extensively about it online. why is that so hard to understand

[suckrose-and-akwa]

[cryptidunknown]

3500 years ago a bunch of people decided to build a tower to the sky and now I have to worry about keeping up my Duolingo streak

[hell-propaganda]

why would you blame the people reaching for heaven instead of the god who cursed them

[bunjywunjy]

add that one to the list, boys

[applejuicewerewolf]

You're right and you should say it