I'm impressed by the way no one gives a shit, nobodys even lookin up, I see a regular train goin by and I'll stop to stare at it all gormless
Literally days later, I realised this was the Wuppertal monorail (because apparently I don't read the text of tweets in foreign languages)
they killed an elephant with that.
on purpose or was there a horrible accident following its escape from the zoo
kind of in between
they thought it would be a great idea to show off how cool their new monorail was by taking a zoo elephant for a ride in it
... it was not a great idea.
Imagine being a Frankish peasant in the early 9th century and seeing an elephant walk past you
What would the reactions be like, do you think there would be people going "eh, I imagined it to be bigger"
Douchebags exist in every timeline, nation, culture, and group, so I think it’s virtually guaranteed some one would pooh-pooh the most incredible thing everyone they’d ever known had ever seen.
Imagine being a Frankish peasant in the early 9th century and seeing an elephant walk past you
What would the reactions be like, do you think there would be people going "eh, I imagined it to be bigger"
My neice was like 4 the first time she saw an elephant and like she knew what they were from tv but shed never seen one in person and she could not articulate how big it was when she told me about it.
So I assume it was a little like that but with more swearing
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
Coming across a large animal that you previously had no sense of scale for can be...intimidating.
Or maybe it was the fact that we got buzzed by a 16' Tiger shark the size of our Catamaran a 1/4 mile off shore in Florida that was intimidating. I'd snorkeled around reef sharks before, obviously been to aquariums. But to see something that large, up close, in person was a sense of dread I have not experienced since.
August 12th, 2020: It actually took a few tries to get something decent out of GPT-3 for Dinosaur Comics-style text, likely because there isn't a lot of internet text data that looks quite like it. We're UNIQUE here, baby!! Anyway it sure was fun to only write half a comic and get a full comic out, but I'm pretty sure I'll keep writing my own full comics for at least a little while! But if you'd like more algorithmically-generated stories, I have been using it to create new episodes of Star Trek over at @StarTrekAI.
Coming across a large animal that you previously had no sense of scale for can be...intimidating.
Or maybe it was the fact that we got buzzed by a 16' Tiger shark the size of our Catamaran a 1/4 mile off shore in Florida that was intimidating. I'd snorkeled around reef sharks before, obviously been to aquariums. But to see something that large, up close, in person was a sense of dread I have not experienced since.
The very notion of swimming with an animal as large as the whale shark or blue whale terrifies me even though I know they only consume the tiniest of prey.
This is compounded by my deep and primal fear of the open ocean.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Coming across a large animal that you previously had no sense of scale for can be...intimidating.
Or maybe it was the fact that we got buzzed by a 16' Tiger shark the size of our Catamaran a 1/4 mile off shore in Florida that was intimidating. I'd snorkeled around reef sharks before, obviously been to aquariums. But to see something that large, up close, in person was a sense of dread I have not experienced since.
The very notion of swimming with an animal as large as the whale shark or blue whale terrifies me even though I know they only consume the tiniest of prey.
This is compounded by my deep and primal fear of the open ocean.
All it takes is for a blue whale to mistake you for some krill and whoops, suddenly you're in a James Bartley situation...
I'm not sure how to encapsulate my (pretty complex) feelings about being killed by blue whale but overall I think i'd be honoured.
I’m not terrified of being kilt by a blue whale, that is preposterous and demonstrably quite difficult to achieve, requiring a cavalcade of awful decisions that are entirely within my control.
It is the idea of a creature as monstrously huge as the blue whale that horrifies me.
It is irrational and too primal to express in words.
I'm not sure how to encapsulate my (pretty complex) feelings about being killed by blue whale but overall I think i'd be honoured.
I’m not terrified of being kilt by a blue whale, that is preposterous and demonstrably quite difficult to achieve, requiring a cavalcade of awful decisions that are entirely within my control.
It is the idea of a creature as monstrously huge as the blue whale that horrifies me.
It is irrational and too primal to express in words.
oh no i get you I was mostly responding to chris
like to be actually killed by a blue you'd really have to work for it.
I'm not sure how to encapsulate my (pretty complex) feelings about being killed by blue whale but overall I think i'd be honoured.
I’m not terrified of being kilt by a blue whale, that is preposterous and demonstrably quite difficult to achieve, requiring a cavalcade of awful decisions that are entirely within my control.
It is the idea of a creature as monstrously huge as the blue whale that horrifies me.
It is irrational and too primal to express in words.
oh no i get you I was mostly responding to chris
like to be actually killed by a blue you'd really have to work for it.
Frankly, if I set everything up to get smashed by a blue whale and escaped with like, only broken bones, I’m pretty sure I’d be kind of pissed off.
Do you have any idea what I went through to make this happen, you gentle leviathan?
You couldn’t be assed to shrug your flippers a little harder and finish the job?!
I wouldn't say I have a terror of the deep ocean exactly but it inspires something of the same feeling in me
like my sheer insignificance in the face of the power and size of the ocean is simultaneously deeply unsettling and extremely exhilarating. Part of me always wants to swim out and just keep going, so I think my rational brain has to kind of manually engage a fear response in order to stop me being a total idiot.
Coming across a large animal that you previously had no sense of scale for can be...intimidating.
Or maybe it was the fact that we got buzzed by a 16' Tiger shark the size of our Catamaran a 1/4 mile off shore in Florida that was intimidating. I'd snorkeled around reef sharks before, obviously been to aquariums. But to see something that large, up close, in person was a sense of dread I have not experienced since.
I'm not fully awake yet so when I read this post the first time I missed the crucial "shark" in it. Whoah that sounds really frightening especially because you wouldn't really expect it. Wait how much is 16 feet again in metres? That can't be right. Oh.
Still pretty frightening, but kinda disappointed now.
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited August 2020
see the size doesn't really phase me that much, being terrified because something is that much bigger than you feels really anthropocentricly biased
I mean, ya'll ever swatted at a fly
have you considered how the fly would regard you had it the sapience, your size, your inconceivable massiveness compared to its own
We too are monstrosities, grotesquely vast and uncaring, compared to so many creatures we interact with every day, knowingly or not
the horror of scale is constantly around us, we are simply privileged to be numb to it
see the size doesn't really phase me that much, being terrified because something is that much bigger than you feels really anthropocentricly biased
I mean, ya'll ever swatted at a fly
have you considered how the fly would regard you had it the sapience, your size, your inconceivable massiveness compared to its own
We too are monstrosities, grotesquely vast and uncaring, compared to so many creatures we interact with every day, knowingly or not
the horror of scale is constantly around us, we are simply privileged to be numb to it
Privileged to be numb is kind of a weird way to look at it.
Most creatures that we are aware of lack the processing capacity to experience existential horror at all. A gnat is not really concerned with how you interact with it beyond “move or die right now”.
Plus it sounds way cooler to say we are cursed with ponderous perspective.
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited August 2020
No I will stick with privileged numbness, because I am sure if we were constantly aware of the size of mountains or continents we would be driven insane
I mean, scale aside, just relinquishing awareness is a privilege
have you ever just tried maintaining spacial awareness of a place you were no longer in? The cabin of your car, your bedroom during work, the bathrooms at your work in the middle of the night
now add to that every car cabin, every bedroom, every restroom
and add to those the awareness of the physical distance between those spaces
I got that existential feeling of dread in open waters one time. I was swimming off the back of the boat in about 180m of water. We were about 110km offshore.
I remember looking down at my feet, dangling in the blue, and thought, “if I just sank to the bottom right now, nobody would ever find me” it was a very strange experience
Continents and the ocean eventually started feeling pretty small to me because their size doesn't protect vulnerable animal and plant species from humans
The ocean also doesn't seem big enough to absorb all the trash we put into it
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Literally days later, I realised this was the Wuppertal monorail (because apparently I don't read the text of tweets in foreign languages)
they killed an elephant with that.
on purpose or was there a horrible accident following its escape from the zoo
kind of in between
they thought it would be a great idea to show off how cool their new monorail was by taking a zoo elephant for a ride in it
... it was not a great idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi
I feel a lot better now. For three years every time I passed Wuppertal on the train I would feel sick and sad.
What would the reactions be like, do you think there would be people going "eh, I imagined it to be bigger"
Douchebags exist in every timeline, nation, culture, and group, so I think it’s virtually guaranteed some one would pooh-pooh the most incredible thing everyone they’d ever known had ever seen.
My neice was like 4 the first time she saw an elephant and like she knew what they were from tv but shed never seen one in person and she could not articulate how big it was when she told me about it.
So I assume it was a little like that but with more swearing
Or maybe it was the fact that we got buzzed by a 16' Tiger shark the size of our Catamaran a 1/4 mile off shore in Florida that was intimidating. I'd snorkeled around reef sharks before, obviously been to aquariums. But to see something that large, up close, in person was a sense of dread I have not experienced since.
literally unbelievable, even!
The very notion of swimming with an animal as large as the whale shark or blue whale terrifies me even though I know they only consume the tiniest of prey.
This is compounded by my deep and primal fear of the open ocean.
All it takes is for a blue whale to mistake you for some krill and whoops, suddenly you're in a James Bartley situation...
I’m not terrified of being kilt by a blue whale, that is preposterous and demonstrably quite difficult to achieve, requiring a cavalcade of awful decisions that are entirely within my control.
It is the idea of a creature as monstrously huge as the blue whale that horrifies me.
It is irrational and too primal to express in words.
oh no i get you I was mostly responding to chris
like to be actually killed by a blue you'd really have to work for it.
Frankly, if I set everything up to get smashed by a blue whale and escaped with like, only broken bones, I’m pretty sure I’d be kind of pissed off.
Do you have any idea what I went through to make this happen, you gentle leviathan?
You couldn’t be assed to shrug your flippers a little harder and finish the job?!
like my sheer insignificance in the face of the power and size of the ocean is simultaneously deeply unsettling and extremely exhilarating. Part of me always wants to swim out and just keep going, so I think my rational brain has to kind of manually engage a fear response in order to stop me being a total idiot.
I'm not fully awake yet so when I read this post the first time I missed the crucial "shark" in it. Whoah that sounds really frightening especially because you wouldn't really expect it. Wait how much is 16 feet again in metres? That can't be right. Oh.
Still pretty frightening, but kinda disappointed now.
I mean, ya'll ever swatted at a fly
have you considered how the fly would regard you had it the sapience, your size, your inconceivable massiveness compared to its own
We too are monstrosities, grotesquely vast and uncaring, compared to so many creatures we interact with every day, knowingly or not
the horror of scale is constantly around us, we are simply privileged to be numb to it
Privileged to be numb is kind of a weird way to look at it.
Most creatures that we are aware of lack the processing capacity to experience existential horror at all. A gnat is not really concerned with how you interact with it beyond “move or die right now”.
Plus it sounds way cooler to say we are cursed with ponderous perspective.
I mean, scale aside, just relinquishing awareness is a privilege
have you ever just tried maintaining spacial awareness of a place you were no longer in? The cabin of your car, your bedroom during work, the bathrooms at your work in the middle of the night
now add to that every car cabin, every bedroom, every restroom
and add to those the awareness of the physical distance between those spaces
it's too much for a mind to handle
I remember looking down at my feet, dangling in the blue, and thought, “if I just sank to the bottom right now, nobody would ever find me” it was a very strange experience
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
The ocean also doesn't seem big enough to absorb all the trash we put into it
You can get paid for that
As long as you really like peanut butter
but I won't do that.
I do like peanut butter, and have no follow-up questions!