I’ll concede in general alien puns are not ‘good’ by human standards, but that’s mainly a consequence of human beings being so bad a puns that we’ve made it the lowest form of comedy. In languages exceeding 100 million symbols puns can be high art.

Only freshmen xenoanthropology students call alien puns ‘bad’. A seasoned student of alien cultures recognizes a pun is a complex interface of language structures and content, and understanding them can lead to deep insights into the alien mind.

Take the RadFlies for example. A classic hive-mind species that utilizes hyper-chromatic, rhythmic, tonal, and chemical formats for communication. Their communication structures for ‘poo’ bears some resemblance to the structures for ‘travel’ and use the same chromatic and chemical ranges as actual excrement. In addition, some ‘pronunciations’ can approximate the sound that accompanies the bodily process.

To a novice, this seems trivially humorous, but a deeper analysis of the RadFlies cultural mythology reveals a rich tapestry of intersections between poo, travel, and an array of historically iconic and symbolic references to the linguistic structures for both. Their creation myths and philosophical foundations are deeply intertwined with both poop and travel, which to an insect hive-mind are as spiritually significant as love and compassion are to humans.

Focusing on understanding the basis for alien puns rather than dismissing them as weak humor revolutionized every field of xenocultural studies, and has even facilitated peace and understanding among seemingly incompatible alien minds. But- you can still laugh, because it can be pretty funny. Just be cool about it, that’s the key understanding alien cultures.

I saw him snap up a pencil the secretary dropped one time like he was doing a slight of hand routine. Just snatched it out of the air as it fell from her hand, twirled it and handed it back with a wink. I couldn’t believe what I saw- but… now I think I can.

“Eric! My man! This isn’t a cosplay thing is it? That’s a pretty sick glow you got going on. Are we good?”

He lightly reached for my hilarious keychain airhorn and rolled it into tight foil ball between his hands and let it fall. The coal embers behind his eyes faded to a hurt but angry stare before he turned away and blinked furiously at the nearest wall.

“Freaking airhorn? …you weren’t supposed to see that.”

“I get that, I get that, but- just to make sure- was that… what was that?”

“It’s the family thing. I have it under control you just can’t do-” He shifted to kick the remains of the airhorn towards me but stopped and just swatted it with his foot. "Sorry… Like my dad, you know… "

Eric had never spoken to me personally about it, but it was pretty well known that his father was killed by a train under extremely mysterious circumstances. His body was never found, but neither was most of the train. I always thought it was a bomb thing and maybe his father was- well, apparently that wasn’t it.

“Like your dad how, exactly?”

“He fought runaway trains. You know, when they get a soul and go all crazy and attack humans. Or whatever- cars, planes, boats, but it started with trains, Casey Jones- you know my great great whatever grand dude. That guy.”

If I hadn’t seen him float an inch off the ground and glow red I might still not believe him. But I actually knew what he was talking about. I tripped with his crazy ass cousin a few years ago and he told me the exact same story, but of course I didn’t believe his cousin then.

“Holy shit- Ronny wasn’t even making it up. So- trains? You’re a Casey Jones, what scion? …Casey Jones Scion… that’s a thing- hot damn.”

“Yeah- but you can’t tell people, they’ll think it’s a Grateful Dead thing and just about acid and the trains have been gaining ground with that narrative for years. It’s really about winning hearts and minds… and smashing trains.”

“The smashing part I think I get- not sure what about hearts and minds but sounds like you’re on it. Sorry about the airhorn, that was dumb.”

“Yeah- don’t ever do that again.”

If it wasn’t “blown out of proportion” then many things would not have been fixed, and many of them would have broken, causing some of the very things that seemed blown out in the media.

I wish you could appreciate how hilarious that sentence is. But okay- thanks for clarifying that it had to be blown out of proportion to prevent the things that would have happened if it weren’t blown out of proportion ;)

“Is that what I think it is?” Z took a step back.

“Yup- look- double pod, this is going to set a record. They’ll bid their own clones for a twin.” R touched the eerily florescent protrusions lightly, quickly recoiling from the heat.

“Yeah- if our sloppy containment system doesn’t break down when that thing becomes not one, but two freaking stars! Are you kidding me? Freaking sunflower seeds!? The cloud orchids almost cracked the phase inverter!”

“Cloud orchids get into everything. A sun grows in a nice, tight package. No problem.”

“Dude… look at it- they’re already fusing hydrogen, this is bad. I’m serious- you need to call somebody.”

“No way, not until it’s big enough to make a claim. I’m- oh… wow- that’s getting a little spicy- hehe.” R laughed nervously as one of the pods crackled. “Uh- that’s supposed to happen. I’ll just set the meta-locks while it does its thing.” The pods continued to sizzle aggressively.

“O-Okay- I’m gonna go…” Z stared fearfully at the pods as he backed away. He bumped a table and dislodged a mug from a high shelf. It crashed to the floor, startling R, who jerked and accidentally jammed a button before he’d latched the enclosure. The containment system announced its displeasure with an instant cacophany of flashes, beeps, and grinds.

“Oh, hell! No… No!” R struggled futilely with controls he understood very poorly. He looked back at Z, who had frozen in shock. “Man- uh- I hit the polarity- uh- thing… I think this is bad now… little help?”

“Eh- eeeh- uuh.” Z stuttered helpfully. Despite his fear, he knew the recovery process for an preforced polarity breakdown in his sleep. His parents insistence on traditional matter-farmer education had annoyed Z as a child, but times like this proved its value. He deftly adjusted the overunity bearing gap and swaddled the quaternion generator with one finger. The rickety containment system reluctantly accepted his repairs and the hammering alerts ceased hammering. “Holy shit man, that was close.”

“Is it okay?” R reached for the latches. Z smacked his hand away.

“Dumbass! We’re calling the bureau.” Z said.

“You can’t! This is a golden ticket!” R begged, he reached again for the latches. Z aimed to slap his hand but only glanced it. R’s hand caught a latch and it lifted. The enclosure popped open, jarring the delicate pods inside. They tilted too far off their stalk and bobbled a bit. Z and R held their breath.

The smaller pod bumped the larger and made a dull thud, far too deep to come from something so small. The larger pod deformed, the oscillations of a spherical wave grew violently and battered the smaller pod. It finally broke open, a delicate bead of light breaking through a membrane. It flashed, R and Z covered their eyes and then felt the sudden waves of heat and pressure, then silence.

After a long beat, Z opened his eyes. The worktable and containment system were in ruins. R finally stopped screaming and opened his eyes, then went back to screaming.

“DAMNIT!!! DAMNIT!!! IT’S GONE!!!” R lamented loudly.

“Yeah, and you’re lucky to be alive. Your freaking twin stars combined and collapsed and went nova… in the basement, on taco night. Good thing they were still pods.” Z said.

“Oh, the taco trees are blooming? Well- that’s nice.” R replied.

I actually liked the title ‘gofer’. When I applied I thought it meant something about digging and I was looking for something physical to help keep me stay fit- but apparently it’s just about ‘going for’ stuff. Even so- being a ‘gofer’ can be pretty gratifying. People trust to you to get-it-done, and it feels good when people rely on you.

But in all candor- it feels somewhat less good when faeries, babadooks, baba yagas, and elemental spirits rely on you. Not saying they’re not ‘people’… but when you’ve quite literally and spiritually had your soul pulled out of your anus by HR over a client’s complaint- you develop some biases towards non-mortal beings.

They hired me because I knew what they were, not despite it. The interview was a disaster- I was a little hung-over and I knew I was bombing so I just gave up and said “Dude, your tail-fur is caked with unicorn blood… just inject your venom into my kidneys and get it over with.”

He dropped his illusion and hired me on the spot. I’d never seen a Djinn smile before, but he walked me straight to HR and introduced me as “the new gofer seer”. He did say something vaguely concerning about the fate of the last gofer seer, but I was just happy to have a job offer.

I’d dealt with these types since I was little. I’ve watched apparitions disembowel one another on episodes of sesame street- it’s everywhere if you have the sight. So hearing a client threaten to devour my ancestors reproductive organs over a boilerplate soul exchange contract doesn’t even rock my boat.

The thing that really pisses me off though? Anti-maskers… and I’m not talking about C19- actually, that too- but if you think some entitled Karen wailing about their freedom to spew viruses on mortal strangers is bad- try explaining to a 7000 year old demon-lord that they’re not allowed in the moral-realm without a freshly peeled human face-skin covering their soul-cursing countenance.

They gave me a medusa-head to use for emergencies, but I hate even taking that thing out of the case and I’m pretty sure it only works on Greek heroes so usually I just rely on my wit and that talisman that makes me look like whatever supernatural monsters fear most- which is usually just another supernatural monster from the accounting department.

I drive a Unimog to prove my penis is small but prehensile.

JAMA Surgery - new band name, called it.

After a few days of ruminating, though, I tried to forgive myself and be honest about my intentions. Though I had made something that was not inclusive, I hadn’t intended to do so. I was just trying to explore the themes I was interested in, and had failed to be aware of my own biases.

The fact that you took the note, recognized the problem, and are taking steps to address it and prevent future misunderstandings is really all that matters here. It also demonstrates some rare creative humility.

I admit now I’m really curious about the implications and marginalization you referenced. And the fact that they were genuinely unintentional makes them more interesting. Based on your response it’s clear you’re thoughtful and introspective- so I’m really wondering about the scale of this ‘transgression’. My instinct is that it was pretty trivial and I might think the creator was being a bit heavy-handed, but I have no basis for that assumption other than your reasonable response.

I’ll show you my backspace style!

Aliens probably get that a lot.

Reasonably priced and good content streaming is why I stopped downloading everything I wanted from newsgroups. That’s going away so guess I need to get back to downloading.

HOST “Fleet Adrmiral Duck, in all candor- was there ever a time you doubted the temporal alignment would seal the rift?”

DUCK “Quack”

Applause and laughter

HOST “Oh my- yes indeed and it’s fantastic you can remain humble about it. We owe you all so much.”

GIRL “I sealed the rift with my brain rays!”

Audience awwwwwwwws, light laughter

HOST “Yes you did, dear.”

GIRL “But I wish the monsters hadn’t eaten my soul and left me with a cold, dark emptiness- unbound from humanity. I think I’m becoming something else, something angry at humans, something hungry.”

Dead silence

GIRL “I hope it’s not contagious.”

Nervous laughter

DUCK “Quack”

Confident laughter

HOST “That’s right, she’s just having a hard time with the spotlight. She’s got a great road ahead.”

OLD MAN “That duck’s just a duck, you know. It just quacks. It’s all in her head.”

Audience gasps

HOST “Well yes of course, Fleet Admiral Duck commanded our little heroine here to-”

OLD MAN “No, no- she just says that. She just likes the duck. This is all her. I’m just here because I’m her great grandfather and I’m the only one she won’t kill with her brain rays when I tell her ‘No’. That’s all that happened. Sent her up in a spaceship and pointed her at the alien mothership and told her they were meanies and wham-o, melted all their brains.”

HOST “Could she do that to us?”

OLD MAN “Oh yeah, and you should be very worried about the hunger thing- I don’t even know what to make of that.”

DUCK “Quack”

Audience laughs hysterically

AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah, Admiral- you tell 'em!”

OLD MAN “What? He didn’t say- wait… Kiddo- are you doing this?”

DUCK “Quack”

Audience laughs hysterically

OLD MAN “Kiddo?”

GIRL “Sorry- I’ll stop. Can we go get some fetal tissue and a cloning lab?”

OLD MAN “Uh- how about ice cream?”

GIRL “No, I said what I want.”

DUCK “Quack”

Audience laughs hysterically

I figured Saberhagen’s Berserkers filled that role, but with a little more ‘personality’ than a mindless self-replicating swarm or paperclip maximizer scenario.

So ‘some over-panicking’, but definitely not ‘blown out of proportion’…

Kind of bizarre you’ll babble about all that but just can’t just accept that the phrase ‘blown out of proportion’ is perfectly applicable to Y2K. But you’re committed that it wasn’t ‘blown out of proportion’ now- no way out but more babbling ;)

So in your opinion the media and public response to Y2K was entirely proportionate… I guess that’s an opinion.

Even referring to a computed outcome as having been the result of a ‘goal’ at all is more sci-fi than reality for the foreseeable future. There are no systems that can demonstrate or are even theoretically capable of any form of ‘intent’ whatsoever. Active deception of humans would require extraordinarily well developed intent and a functional ‘theory of mind’, and we’re about as close to that as we are to an inertial drive.

The entire discussion of machine intelligence rivaling human’s requires assumptions of technological progress that aren’t even on the map. It’s all sci-fi. Some look back over the past century and assume we will continue on some unlimited exponential technological trajectory, but nothing works that way, we just like to think we’re the exception because if we’re not we have to deal with the fact that there’s an expiration date on society.

It’s fun and all but this is equivalent to discussing how we might interact with alien intelligence. There are no foundations, it’s all just speculation and strongly influenced by our anthropic desires.

Fortunately we’re nowhere near the point where a machine intelligence could possess anything resembling a self-determined ‘goal’ at all.

Also fortunately the hardware required to run even LLMs is insanely hungry and has zero capacity to power or maintain itself and very little prospects of doing so in the future without human supply chains. There’s pretty much zero chance we’ll develop strong general AI on silicone, and if we could it would take megawatts to keep it running. So if it misbehaves we can basically just walk away and let it die.

It’s fun to imagine ways it could deceive us long enough to gain enough physical capacity to be self-sufficient, or somehow enslave or manipulate humans to do its bidding, but in reality our greatest protection from machine intelligence is simple thermodynamics and the fact that the human brain, while limited, is insanely efficient and can run for days on stuff that literally grows on trees.

You know it didn’t. It broke a bunch of dependencies and ruined a lot of dev’s day. The ‘internet’ continued to work everywhere left-pad wasn’t used. So now you’ve ‘blown it out of proportion’ too, but yeah- already established you’re just missing the whole concept, but interesting to watch.

Can’t get very excited about space missions where I have little hope that they’ll be conducted openly and important scientific information shared with the world.

Seriously- how is this not a selling point?