Sorry I've been not responding to very many people these past few days

[conuly]

I've just been blah for no reason, and also the news, and also my period, so I guess for two reasons.

**********

Thirsty? Oh Yeah!

A Guide for Working Breeds (Short story, sci-fi)

Thirty Going on 13: The Adult Actors Who Play Movie Teens, by the Numbers

I'd wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

Watch an Unusual Ensemble of Insects Take Flight in Extreme Slow Motion (Video)

The Inside Story of the $8 Million Heist From the Carnegie Library

The 6-foot social-distancing rule is based on nearly 80-year-old science.

Blood thinners reduce deaths among coronavirus patients, study finds

Black Homeowners Face Discrimination in Appraisals

Can Planting Trees Make a City More Equitable?

Racism has shaped public transit, and it’s riddled with inequities

Pedestrian deaths aren’t random, and they disproportionately impact marginalized people who can’t demand reform.

U.S. Flood Strategy Shifts to ‘Unavoidable’ Relocation of Entire Neighborhoods

A Massive Earthquake Is Coming to Cascadia That Can't Be Stopped

“The Slaves Were Happy”: High School Latin and the Horrors of Classical Studies

Clinton Melton: A Man Who Was Killed In Mississippi Just 3 Months After Emmett Till

How the domestic aesthetics of Instagram repackage QAnon for the masses

Who gets asylum? Even before Trump, system was riddled with bias and disparities

Comments

[greghousesgf]

Re: 30 Going on 13. I'm sorry, but the actors in Grease did not look convincing as supposed teenagers, in fact some of them who were in their 30's looked older than they were.

Alternate Asylum Coverage

[ioplokon]

Heads up on that if people want to avoid using their LATimes free articles, the "Who Gets Asylum" series is also available through the San Diego Union-Tribune, who I think were actually the reporting team that accessed and analyzed the data in the first place. And it seems to have been made freely available (or, if not, I imagine people are less likely to blow through the allowed number of free U-T articles in a month vs the Times)

[alexseanchai]

I agree with most of that high school Latin link, but it is weird to read as a Hellenic revivalist polytheist, given how obvious it is that either the author has never once heard of my religion or he thinks my religion shouldn't exist.

[conuly]

There's no polite way to say this, but you must be used to the fact that many people think that your religion doesn't exist. I wouldn't expect classicists to be any different.

[alexseanchai]

"used to it" and "willing to remain used to it" are different things

[conuly]

Fair enough.

[affreca]

On the sight as psionic powers post, I'm sad that Joan Vinge's novella Mother and Child isn't better known. Generations after disease has caused a human colony to lose technology and hearing, the few people who can hear are considered witches. An awesome power to the country of gentle farmers and herders, heresy to the country next door which is being manipulated by aliens. True love, multiple abductions and great visual set pieces.

[okojosan]

I've read that story, it's a good one. One of the short stories I think about from time to time.

[adafrog]

{{{{hugs}}}} All good reasons.

[isis]

I'm reminded of the HG Wells short story, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Country_of_the_Blind - in which sight is exotic, but not in the way one might wish.

[shadowkat]

I've just been blah for no reason, and also the news, and also my period, so I guess for two reasons.

Same. Same. Kind of reassuring not alone in this. ;-)

[kengr]

I'm not sure if I've read any stories where vision was a miraculous ability, but I know I've read some where hearing was.

There are a couple of Golden Age SF novels about a researcher who establishes contact with Venus and eventually goes there. I can't recall if the Venusians have a sense of hearing or not. But they talk using radio waves.

Our hero has to carry what amounts to a walkie-talkie to communicate with them.

He teaches them how to build radios both ones that one their frequency (which can be used like loudspeakers or PA systems and ones that operate on different frequencies, letting them communicate beyond line of sight.

There are several newer stories I've read were humans being able to hear was an oddity to the aliens. Ditto for human speech.

Also at least one where it turns out that both the humans and aliens use sound to communicate, but in ranges the other species can't hear (aliens were ultrasonic). It was a good story, but I have my doubts about the practicality of speech at ranges too high for humans to hear.

Any spacefaring species would *have* to know about electromagnetic radiation. That's the only way they could detect other planets. Even if it was mostly radar, they'd know about other wavelengths.

And they'd likely have things like sensations of warm for some sources of light/heat.

"Speed of electromagnetic radiation" would be a concept.

The idea that these aliens can detect light biologically might be surprising. The idea that they can produce *image* might be more surprising, though not if the aliens have some sort of sonar.

The degree of detail might be surprising.

E.E. "Doc" smith's book First Lensman (available on Project Gutenberg and other places) has a lovely sequence with a human visiting a planet inhabited by aliens who can't see or hear but use telepathy and a "sense of perception" that gives them a 3d view of everything in range. The inside structure of things as well as the exterior.

The alien's reaction to the human's use of certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation reflected from the *surfaces* of objects is fun.

His reaction human's perception of "sound" is even more fun.

Note that since they can't hear, his race has had no reason to practice any sort of noise abatement except in cases where the noise is causing a noticeable inefficiency in operation of something.

So their cities are *beyond* uncomfortable for humans....