28 Mar '20 13:10>2 edits
Yesterday my missus wanted to discuss mutual superpowers. She said that if she had a superpower it would be the ability to converse with all animals. I contended that all superpowers were pointless because they allowed the owner to access a existential dynamic whereby life would be massively impinged or even extinguished.
Conversing with animals would be wonderful she persisted, describing to me how she would use her power to ask the spiders in the home not to terrorise her by running around etc.
Resisting the urge to [FACE-PALM] I explained to her that spiders run like that from sheltered space to sheltered space to avoid birds attacking them. She contested that there were no birds in the house [FACE-PALM] and that she would explain this to the spider. I asked “every spider”. PAUSE. “Yes”. So your life is effectively over as you know it...? As you will spend every waking hour explaining to all manner of spiders that their innate urge to run through open spaces which has been honed over millions of years of evolution is in fact not required. PAUSE.....
I then went on to describe how she would also have to get dragged in other bug politics like being accused of genocide. “HOW?” She squawked, alarmingly like a crow now I come to think of it. Well all the ant killer you use in the garden - genocide - and YOU would be accountable to the ants directly. And with that, that was that in terms of conversing with animals.
My wife said ok what about you wanting to travel in time? Well I explained that that was a pointless superpower without the associated superpower of space travel. Because if I wanted to travel back to before COVID-19 for a beer in the pub, then I would find that the pub was no longer where I thought it was, but millions of miles away on its prior orbit around the sun along with the entire earth. So I would die and awful death in space, alone, cold and with boiling blood.
She just looked at me and said “this is going to be a long lock in”
Conversing with animals would be wonderful she persisted, describing to me how she would use her power to ask the spiders in the home not to terrorise her by running around etc.
Resisting the urge to [FACE-PALM] I explained to her that spiders run like that from sheltered space to sheltered space to avoid birds attacking them. She contested that there were no birds in the house [FACE-PALM] and that she would explain this to the spider. I asked “every spider”. PAUSE. “Yes”. So your life is effectively over as you know it...? As you will spend every waking hour explaining to all manner of spiders that their innate urge to run through open spaces which has been honed over millions of years of evolution is in fact not required. PAUSE.....
I then went on to describe how she would also have to get dragged in other bug politics like being accused of genocide. “HOW?” She squawked, alarmingly like a crow now I come to think of it. Well all the ant killer you use in the garden - genocide - and YOU would be accountable to the ants directly. And with that, that was that in terms of conversing with animals.
My wife said ok what about you wanting to travel in time? Well I explained that that was a pointless superpower without the associated superpower of space travel. Because if I wanted to travel back to before COVID-19 for a beer in the pub, then I would find that the pub was no longer where I thought it was, but millions of miles away on its prior orbit around the sun along with the entire earth. So I would die and awful death in space, alone, cold and with boiling blood.
She just looked at me and said “this is going to be a long lock in”