Lauren's Favorite Things @theltsmash - Tumblr Blog

My latest for New Scientist

TFW you let Tom Hanks down and start crying at the beginning of the championship game because baseball is just damn beautiful.

#world baseball classic #team usa #team venezuela #crybaby

autiebiographical

Plenty of people use canes regardless of their age or ability. They have a variety of uses, including a bludgeoning tool!

In case anyone else is wondering (I was when I woke up at 2:37am for literally no other reason), Trix Yogurt exists again.

#adhd #insomia #the more you know #yogurt

Tonight this song went from being an old favorite to a new friend. Here’s to trying to sleep through an entire night.

#Youtube

You know that feeling when you’re excited for your birb to get home from exploring Bergen (with your wife’s birb) so she can see the espresso machine you unlocked for her by doing a good job taking care of yourself? Yeah, me too. Priceless, right?!

#finch app #selfcare #marriage #espresso

homosexualslug

beautiful conversations happening on twitter

Well, that was literally the most frustrating crossword puzzle of my life.

#nyt games #nyt games spoilers #crossword

dspud

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I think that when talking about the Fermi paradox, too many people assume that intelligent life is inherently colonial.

Like, on Earth, for every hyper-imperialistic culture, there are 200 that just… aren’t.

What if they value other things? What if they see no reason to go probing and conquering?

We can assume that space aliens are “like us” without assuming that they’re like white British people specifically, can’t we?

And why assume that humans of the far future will be like humans of today? Why assume that we will become a space-faring colonial force, eager to leave our home and manifest-destiny our way across the Milky Way?

I don’t think we’ll ever lose our curiosity, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to learn about distant stars, but will we feel the need to live on them?

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I’m saying this as an art history person, by the way.

As humans, all cultures have the same mental and physical capabilities. Any culture on earth could have hypothetically produced hyper-realistic Greek-like sculptures or Renaissance-like paintings.

But realism in ancient art is incredibly rare. Not because most ancient cultures were incapable of creating realistic art, but because most ancient cultures valued other things.

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What I’m getting at isn’t the idea that space colonization (or even exploration) is inherently wrong. What I’m saying is that I want to dispute the idea that intelligent life must inherently develop forward into some “perfected” state, whether that be Dyson spheres or matroshka brains or complete control over our galaxy.

It reminds me a lot of that “march of progress” illustration. The idea that evolution— or civilization— has some sort of end goal. And that that end goal must involve increased intelligence, solar-system size computers, and mass control over vast swaths of the universe, no matter where you started from, on earth or otherwise.

Back to the idea of art: imagine being born way back when and watching the development of extreme realism in painting, and wondering just how realistic paintings could get. What new heights will be reached? Maybe paintings will eventually feel like literally, actually looking out a window, or actually having a person in front of you.

But in the unimaginable future, in 500 odd years, realism isn’t actually nearly as valued.

What I’m saying is that many people expect “advanced” aliens or future human civilization to look like this, which it very well might: