To Add On To The Last Reblog, You Can Theoretically Attain Infinite Speed In One Round If You Are A Gnome.

to add on to the last reblog, you can theoretically attain infinite speed in one round if you are a gnome. You have the rest of your party ready an action with the trigger being “handed a gnome” and the reaction being “pass along to the next person.” by being picked up by someone and having each of your allies pass you along, because there are no limits on the number of reactions per round, you can get your effective speed as high as you want. this is called the “Railgun Maneuver.”

Well, I've been asked to come back on tumblr, so I'll start by posting some of my recent (ish) videos while I try to remember how to tumbl again!

This is a free coupon/excuse for you to infodump on the current topic you’re obsessed with. Take some time away from internet discourse and share with us something you find interesting.

Today I read about Precambrian animals!

The above one is Thectardis, which is an animal so weird we have almost no inclination of how to categorize it. We know it was alive and it was cone shaped. That’s it.

The thing about fossil life from 500+ million years ago is that there often aren’t really any living analogs for it? Many of the animals from that time were sessile, many filter feeders, without much in common with what comes to mind when we think “Animal”—something that moves around and has a brain and thinks. The strata that preserve these animals are very rarely accessible, and these glimpses we have are hard to interpret.

Many of these creatures are known from a single fossil. Many are too weird to interpret or classify even tentatively.

Here’s another organism from that time, Eoandromeda:

Look at this thing. I can’t explain why, but Eoandromeda makes me feel some kind of deep dread. Like...we don’t know what this thing was. We don’t even know if it was an animal. I look at that shape and I want someone to tell me what that thing is. But we don’t know. We don’t have the words for What That Thing Is.

Imagine something so alien, so divergent from the paths life took to the present day, that we can’t look at it and say “That’s a worm” or “That’s a sponge” or “that’s a jellyfish” or...anything. The words for it literally don’t exist, because nothing like it now exists, and we know nothing about it. We’re not looking at different versions of the same categories of creature we have now. We’re looking at something that is too obscure to have a category. We can guess what it might have looked like. But it is so utterly unlike anything that exists now that we know nothing—except that undeniably, it existed.

Namacalathus. Be honest, doesn’t this make you scream inside? Or is it just me? This was a real animal that existed. It doesn’t know or give a fuck what a “snail” or “bird” is.

Learning about dinosaurs is DIFFERENT. We know what bones are. We have them! When we say that sauropod dinosaurs ate plants, we can imagine those plants. We can describe dinosaurs as having a “neck” and “claws” and “legs.” And I think that’s comforting because whatever I feel when I look at Namacalathus is not that.

This one invented muscles! Muscles are okay! I have muscles! That should make me feel better, right!

...Not really! Put it back!

For millions of years these things existed, living their unknowable lives. There was an entire world of these organisms. This was EARTH, our world.

People mostly haven’t heard of these. I think people care less about these strange early creatures because they seem less charismatic, not having brains or doing anything, but I think there is a lot of charisma to the Unknowable Cone Animal, the Dread Spiral, and all the other unsettling animals of the Precambrian.

there’s a mod that came out recently for 1.16 called Alex’s Mobs [link] that adds a few of these and many more besides! I personally haven’t played it yet bc I haven’t gotten around to installing mods so far but I’ve seen some videos praising it and it’s at the top of my list for 1.16 mods to grab.

animals I think should be in Minecraft

I know I’ve posted my opinions on this before but my opinions have now been refined, improved, and increased in power

fireflies. Would glow similar to the glow squid while freely flying. They would spawn at night in lush biomes and you could catch them in a jar and place it for a light source. I think they’d be a great counterpart to bees!

Deer: Many good reasons: Babies with spots. Would drop antlers. Antlers could grow over time? Add some more distinctive life to the forests. Simply an important Animal. Could be very fast and run from the player if they got too close without sneaking.

Alligators. An animal for swamps, which we really need. They would attack you, but only if you got REALLY close to them (so you’d have to watch out in swamps). They could drop alligator hide.

Falcons: I stand by my assertion that Minecraft desperately needs more birds. A bird of prey would be really cool, and you could tame it and it could bring you rabbits, or maybe scout ahead and circle around interesting structures or warn you of danger. Falconry!!

CROWS: Like villages, a group of crows would have a “popularity” associated with it. You could feed one and it would bring you tiny gifts like string, gold nuggets, stuff like that. If you kill or hurt one all the other crows in the area become hostile when you come near, however. What if there was a music disc you could ONLY get by feeding crows?

Hummingbirds: Players could plant flowers to attract hummingbirds, with certain combinations of flowers being the best at attracting them. There could be both common and rare colors of hummingbirds. They wouldn’t have to have any function other than being cute, but a possible function would be to occasionally have a bone-meal-like plant growth effect on plants, flowers and grass blocks they pass over.

Leopards: I want there to be a big cat so much. And I say leopards because you could have normal (savanna), black (maybe dark forest) and snow (mountains) versions. My thought is that they will attack if you move quickly near them, but if you stay still or sneak while they’re close by they won’t bother you.

Mice: So, hear me out: there aren’t any rodents yet, and I really like the mechanic the silverfish have where blocks can be “infested” with them, and I think there should be small animals that could be similarly “flushed out” of grass or grass blocks. Also they could be found in hay bales in villages.

Snakes: Similar to above where they could be “flushed out” of grass or other blocks. Different varieties, some harmless, some venomous; the varieties could be biome-specific. I also think there should be huge ones in jungles.

Poison dart frogs: The axolotl has set things up for there to be more amphibians, and poison dart frogs could come in lots of colors!!! You could also collect poison from them, which could let you create paralyzing arrows that immobilize mobs they hit for 2-3 seconds.

Clams and giant clams: Not a mob per se but I think you should be able to get clams from digging in sand on beaches, in a similar way that flint drops from gravel. You could cook and eat them but also they could be a source of pearls, which I think makes sense since pearl is often considered a gemstone. (Also imagine how beautiful pearl blocks would be!) The ocean floor should also have giant clams imo.

@tilthat is down

I WON????

been thinking about this a lot lately and it made me realize that the language we use to talk about our future presence in the solar system reflects ideas that shouldn’t cross over with space exploration. words like “colonize” and “settle” in the context of human life on other worlds brings up disquieting imagery of rampant exploitation without regard for the local environment or the people involved, i.e. imperial colonialism. this is most literal when said by people like Musk or Bezos who want to do exactly that, and I’m convinced that it’s in our best interests to stop them. we have to change many things about our civilization before we’re truly ready to begin building an ethical, sustainable presence in the solar system, because right now we don’t even have an ethical, sustainable presence on our own home planet.

TL;DR - we, as a global society, need to decolonize ourselves before we end up colonizing space.

we’ve got work to do, folks.

I think a lot of space enthusiasts, including myself, can get carried away when talking about space exploration so here’s a reminder that “space exploration and multi-planetary civilization good” and “manifest destiny bad” are both extremely important and CAN coexist. just because we’re smart and we’re alone in our solar system (we think) does not mean we own the universe. the cosmos is not made for us, we simply live in it. our future lies among the stars, yes. but that future is as students of nature, and we should exercise our tremendous technological power with care and humility. we are children of the cosmos, not lords. we should be explorers, not conquerors. we’ve made those mistakes before.

Wayne Douglas Barlowe