Humans are the weirdest aliens?

i bought it for kindle, its pretty great.

 

Imagine trying to explain hurricane hunters to aliens.
'We put a bunch of volunteers in flimsy, flying tun cans and fly them into giant atmospheric disruptions for the sake of finding out the details of said disruptions. Not just do the vast majority of these people survive, they Fly missions like that on the regular, year after year'

 

Tornado chasers would probably be even worse. :::PPP

 

Why? Only some of them park in front of the tornadoes, not all of them.

 

Or even better trying to explain the people that choose to stay in the path of hurricanes or willingly go there to stand in the worse if it to report what is going on

 

You know, I don't think "humans consume poisonous substances for fun" would be that interesting. Other animals do that too, after all, so why wouldn't aliens.
But you know what could be interesting? Horrifying hangover cures. I know of some divers on offshore oil platforms who essentially go 40 feet underwater and give themselves oxygen poisoning, and are convinced "you feel much better once the seizures stop".

 

I mean, I'd assume that you pretty much always feel better after a seizure stops; i've never had a seizure but i imagine it's not comfortable

 

Oh my god what, oxygen poisoning is not a joke, c'mon

 

Alien: "You have microbial beings residing in your alimentary canal?"

 

Agreed, but having known people who work in oil fields (not deep-sea rigs, they worked out in the Alberta fields), I'm not really surprised that anyone in that profession would think "hey, if I do this stupid and dangerous thing, it'll definitely help with this other thing that can be managed without needing to do the stupid dangerous thing". Especially for hangovers. Mom-in-law works (well - worked, at this point) as a safety officer and has stories about the stupid shit she's had to keep people from doing.

 

dfnajkfnajfknanfafanaklnaflknfa

 

Do you feel like sharing those stories for posterity by any chance?

 

Yeah, but with the caveat that what I recall is all second and third-hand stuff whose details I'm fuzzy on, so it's less "gripping tale like what would be seen in the Customer Service Stories thread" and more "so more than once, mom-in-law has had to tell people that yes they actually do have to wear their eye protection".

That said: more than once, mom-in-law has had to tell people that yes, they do actually have to wear their eye protection. I'm pretty sure all of these people have been doing tasks where it wasn't just "we need to follow the rules, everyone wears eye protection if they're in a work area", it was "if you're not wearing eye protection and something happens, you'll be lucky if the worst is that you lose an eye" and if someone gets hurt, she has to shut down the work site for a bit and write up an incident report.
She has also had to tell people that they do, in fact, have to wear their masks. (Basically, a thing to keep dust and bad air from being as much of an issue, some of the sites can fuck up your lungs if you don't have your mask on in required areas.) She has had to threaten to shut the site down if she caught people not wearing their masks.
She has had to verbally slap a foreman to was trying to argue that he and his crew didn't need her permission to be on-site, that she didn't need to be there to verify they were abiding by safety regs because he had the certifications necessary, and that they totally had all the certifications they needed to go work. (They were carpenters, I think, and trying to argue that they could do welding stuff. Which no, they did not have the certifications to do. And yes, they did need her permission and her oversight to be there and working, she is safety officer for the whole company and not just the one work site; the guy did not have the certifications to replace her, and would not have been authorized to do so even if he had.)
And I recall at least one story where she had to smack people verbally for trying to go into a site she'd closed down because of hazardous gasses, although it may be the same guy who was trying to argue that his crew was certified to do welding (which isn't permitted to be done if there's hazardous gasses anyways).

I'm pretty sure there's also been stories of having to smack people for complaining about or trying to weasel out of post-incident pee tests, including one guy who turned out to have been fucked up on Everything and was trying to blame her for his having been caught. Basically, every time an accident happens on-site? Everyone involved has to do a drug test, allegedly to check if drugs or alcohol were a contributing factor; unofficially, it's Known that this is more so the companies can try and see if they can shift the blame onto anyone who tests hot. But it's pretty much just accepted, because oil field work is very dangerous and no one wants to get hurt or killed because their co-worker decided it'd be a great idea to drink on the job or get high during lunch; there is a lot of cultural pressure, among site workers, to be completely sober when you get up for work and to not do any sort of drugs while you're out West working. (Actual prescription drugs are the one exception to this, but the general feeling from what I've been told is that if you need prescription pain meds to get through the work day on-site, you should just go on disability because you shouldn't be working construction at that point.) But of course, there's always someone who decides that they can totally be fine if they're drunk or stoned and everyone else is just being Too Cautious, and then something goes bad and they test hot.
If I remember right, dude who was fucked up on Everything had (among other stuff) prescription painkillers he either didn't have a prescription for or hadn't submitted the prescription for to the company (he had a fucky back or shoulder and was trying to get enough hours that he could afford to take the time off for surgery to fix it), and may have been drunk but I'm not 100% sure on that. He definitely wrecked one of the company trucks while driving somewhere off-site, though, which is what resulted in him getting tested, and he wasn't supposed to be driving it anywhere at all at that particular time. Mom-in-law was sympathetic up until the moment he started trying to blame her.

Most of these stories are fuzzy because they're several years old at this point. All her recent stories have involved the bosses at the companies she works for trying to fuck with her vacation hours or trying to argue that they don't need her permission/don't need her on-site in order to have the sites open and have people working at them. She is literally either the only certified safety officer working in the oil fields at this point or one of two, and they legally do need a certified safety officer on-site in order to have the sites open and staffed. (I don't remember if her sister's also a certified safety officer, or just admin.) They're going to have trouble once she officially qualifies for disability, because it's not looking like she's ever going to be able to go back to work.

 

If some alien asks you to define humanity, just show them this image.

(source because most kintsugijin are humans, apparently)

 

oh my god. i would say 'i cannot believe someone came up with this' but honestly it's more a case of 'i cannot believe it took them so long'

Also i now desire to fill them with some kinda mouse or yoghurt cream base or make ones in different colors BECAUSE OF COURSE I DO

 

[citation needed]

 

I WANT THOS

 

Today on 'humans are space orcs'

We had a little old lady walk into the ER, under her own power, with an Hb (hemoglobin) value of 3.5.

For reference: normal is somwhere between 10 and 12 or higher. Panic range is anything below 7. Yet this lady has apparently bled down so slowly and just adapted down so well that she walked into the ER with a fourth of what she should have and even had the energy left to flirt with the doctor.

Anything that won't kill a human outright we'll adapt to.

(She got two units blood to bounce her up to 6.9 and is doing fine btw.)