Challenge #02753-G196: To Win By Technicality
In arguments it’s okay to swear. Usually many times your words must be quick witted and sharp like a rapier, other times, you just need bash your enemies skulls in with the metaphorical folding chair to get you point across. – Anon Guest
Arguments are peculiar things. Some people believe that the winner is the one who remains calm and logical and debates all relevant points with scientific sources, and the loser is the first one to drop a sample of foul language. This is, of course, the perspective of people with no skin in the game and nothing to lose.
Other, more rational people know that arguments come from places of passion on both sides, and accept a certain amount of foul language. It serves the purpose of emphasis, emotional venting, and filler words as the arguer figures out the next phrase to drop from their mouths. If you’re articulate, they say, you’re doing it wrong.
Then there’s the Loudest Wins versus the Calm Rational Debater, which is always fun for the spectators. One keeps the words flowing, as many per minute as they can, at the most volume that they can, while the other keeps attempting to interject in a calm and rational voice. The louder one moves ahead, claiming that the quiet one is interrupting and starting their train of thought barrelling through again and again whilst also making a mockery of the quiet logician.
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Challenge #02752-G195: For the Thrills
The human is sitting with aliens who study the weather and they show some old videos, first giving offensensitivity warnings, of human storm chasers. They explain the jobs of the storm chasers, the dangers, and what was learned from those brave men and women who sometimes lost their lives in the pursuit of scientific discovery. They also explained of storm-tourists. Those insane adrenaline junkies who would go with storm chasers to catch a glimpse of storms like tornadoes, to be able to photograph and video them, sometimes taking their children with them. Just to have an adventure. – Anon Guest
Humans have to be insane. No other species they knew of did things like this, not even in more dangerous times when lifespans were understandably shorter. Not a single intelligent life form known to the Alliance had ever willingly gone into dangerous phenomena for the thrills. When they had gone, for science, for discovery, for a desperate chance, they certainly didn’t take their children with them.
This was clearly footage of Humans going towards a highly dangerous storm. A storm that destroyed property, destroyed lives, and caused intense damage wherever it went. Not only were they going towards clear and evident danger, but they were doing so with their fragile young in tow.
“What could a pre-verbal Human possibly learn from this excursion?” asked Companion Thrik, staring at the still frame of the adult Human with a much smaller Human strapped to their body. “Is that harness safe for such unsafe conditions? How does the protection from flying debris work?”
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Challenge #02751-G194: You and Your Hobbies
The human got a job at a rather busy space station as an IT person and as a structural engineer. They did a lot of work with computers and with keeping up maintenance on this place. But when they signed the contract, they had an unusual clause, one that, it was discovered, they always asked for no matter what place they worked. Their quarters must be at least twice to three times the size of normal crew quarters. This was not too big a problem, but curiosity got the better one of one of the haven-worlders on staff who came to visit. Inside it was like they stepped back in time. A large loom in one area with a half-finished rug on it, a floor harp sitting by a very unusual, if small, canopy bed, wooden bowls and cups, a fake fire burning in an artificial fireplace, and there was the human, sitting by illumination of a fake candle, just bright enough to read by, writing a letter using an old-fashioned dip-quill and ink bottle. – DaniAndShali
Humans are strange. They have their odd little ways about things in general and what particulars they have in peculiarity. Other cogniscents would have things the other way around, but that’s Humans for you.
One such example was Human Bee. They worked mostly as a technician with assorted computers and some structural engineering when necessary, but their particular peculiarity was a set of personal quarters twice the size of the standard residence for a singular Human. Speculation, naturally, abounded. Humans had concealed family and friends in the fear that their discovery would lead to retribution, or through some desire to help their pack-mates escape a terrible existence.
A Human protecting a fellow Human and pack-mate from even imagined retribution would not reveal the presence of such until they were close to death, and despite repeated assurances, would continue such practices for as long as they could. The most famous example was the Trent Twins’ Two-For-One Sale, which continued for the better portion of a decade before their discovery as two beings instead of one. Therefore, the crew of Distant Star Station suspected that Human Bee might be concealing a pack-mate in their quarters. The next problem was how to broach the subject.
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Challenge #02750-G193: What Evil Sows…
Human’s blood is a well-known weapon. Full of leucocytes ready to protect human body from disease and foreign invaders. While used on other forms of life it can act like acid; burning and destroying skin. Blood isn’t a cheap thing, because selling it is forbidden everywhere. But black market found a way to produce enough blood to gain on it — blood farms. Cages where humans are drugged so they won’t fight back. Everything begins to fall apart when one of farm workers didn’t drug their victims and humans finally started to realise what is happening around them. – Anon Guest
[AN: It isn’t just the acid and the leucocytes, Human blood is loaded with pathogens that breed once removed from the body and left in certain conditions. Look up forensic cleaning sometime if you really want to learn about the nasties that happen because of blood spatter. Offensensitivity warning for drug use in the story below.]
Humans are Deathworlders. This is known. Their very bodies are factories of pathogens in multiple forms. Their mouths are cesspools of bacteria. Their bodily fluids are acidic. As for their blood… it is truly a font of chemical warfare. Even a healthy Human’s blood is loaded with pathogens, antibodies, enzymes and so forth. A biological cornucopia that’s one crucial tilt away from attacking its own host in confusion. All of this is known.
If someone could find a way to create in abundance what a Human body does naturally, they could reign in terror over multiple Havenworlder, and even normal Galactic worlds. This, too, is known. There are unethical sorts who will sell Humans to interested parties… some of them are also Human. This, despite everything, is known. The CRC repeatedly attempt to stop them, but there are always more.
Given all this, it was no surprise that a facility like Rapture Farms would arise. Take one Greater Deregulation, rife with dissidents who do not like living in a world where even clean air is taxed. Add a pinch of knowledge, which is always a dangerous thing. Stir well with the Dunning-Kruger effect, and you inevitably get Rapture Farms.
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Challenge #02749-G192: Disentangling Groupthink
Gamer‘s mob mentality https://youtu.be/1DALU-AHb-U – Anon Guest
[AN: offensensitivity warning for toxic masculinity content, simulated violence within the linked video]
No matter what the team sport, Humans will become so invested in their team that hostility becomes part of the identification procedure. – Excerpt from The Galactic’s Guide to Human.
The real trick, the Alliance decided, was to discourage the truly horrible behaviour when it started. Allowing it to persist only resulted in worse examples of more of the same. Humans followed the will of the pack, no matter how eclectic or bizarre that pack might be. Gentle correction and a certain amount of tactical questioning has been most effective.
“I do not understand the humour,” said Vrex, in a textbook example of quelling an offensive attempt at humour via confusion. “Can you educate me in the meaning?”
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