When we at Galacticracked published last month's article "Ten Reasons to be Afraid of our Newest Allies", we were a little nervous about what would happen if it ever fell into human hands. We asked the state department, and they said not to worry: it probably wouldn't. (New species are given copies of the greatest artistic works of the galaxy to aid cultural integration, but apparently Galacticracked doesn't make the list.) And even if it did, they said, Humans have a sense of humor and are entirely capable of taking a joke.
Not long after we published, we began getting letters from Humans. Not a single threat, so it seems the part about being able to take a joke is true (phew), just polite little corrections. This does suggest they're probably quite capable of telling jokes, so we can't vouch for the accuracy of any of these letters. We still thought you should see them:
Little Risk of That
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
I enjoyed your recent description of my home (Earth) as a “deathworld” and of my continent in particular (Australia) as the deadliest, but I regret to inform you that your description of Australia contained some urban legends. Drop bears and Yowie do not actually exist; crocodiles will not hunt a specific individual for hundreds of miles, and Funnel-web spiders, while deadly, cannot dissolve your entire body in seconds.
Australia has a long and proud tradition of exaggerating its dangers to outsiders. Why, you ask? Well, it's simple. By human standards, living on a continent of 90% inhospitable desert with dozens of extremely venomous animals and a handful that can simply rip you limb from limb just isn't dangerous enough. If we didn't exaggerate, people would think we'd gone soft!
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
If Anything, We're More Confused
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
In your recent article on humanity, I think you got confused because of the phrase “martial art”. Let me see if I can help.
Jiu Jitsu is a style of violence. It is often practiced in a spirit of friendly competition, with rules to prevent (or at least decrease the frequency of) serious injury, but it is at its core about subduing an opponent.
Ballet is a style of dance. It is about beauty and is fundamentally collaboration.
True, both involve picking other people up and throwing them in the air, and many of the early exercises (for balance and body-awareness) are the same, but they really are entirely different activities.
I hope this clears things up.
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
A Handful a Year is Too Many for Us
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
I am writing to clarify a few points with regard to human pet-keeping. You wrote that “Millions of humans keep apex predators in their homes for the sake of 'cuddliness',” and that “Dogs are a subspecies of wolves: smaller but still as deadly.”
First of all, while most dogs are smaller than wolves, some are considerably larger.
But the important difference is that dogs are friendlier than wolves. Many dogs are physically capable of ripping out their owners' throats, but only a handful each year actually do. This is why, though they are biologically a subspecies, it makes more sense to think of them as a different sort of animal. A thousand generations of selective breeding can make a real difference.
[Editor's note: Combining this last sentence with Human history suggests that all living dogs are descended from pet wolves kept before the development of metallurgy or agriculture. Perhaps Humans have mellowed?]
Some Humans do keep wolves as pets, but this is something that thousands, not millions, of humans do. The practice is somewhat controversial. It can go well, but failing to properly socialize the cub can result in a feral creature which is a danger to all around it, and keeping a wolf in an inadequate space is cruel to the animal.
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
In which We Learn Not to Ask Rhetorical Questions
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
In your recent article on humanity you discussed the habit of smoking and asked “What's next? Recreational setting oneself on fire?” As a regular practitioner of recreational self-fire-setting, I can assure you that it is safer than smoking. Granted, it can go horribly wrong, but if done properly serious injuries are extremely unlikely and there is no long-term health risk at all.
To speak more precisely, human skin isn't very flammable so we cover ourselves (or each other) in highly flammable liquids and ignite those. My favorite fuel is isopropyl alcohol, usually diluted with water to 75% concentration. [Editor's note: As a follow-up, we asked what the alcohol was reacting with. Yes, it's Earth's 20% oxygen atmosphere. Yikes!]
Please don't go out and try it based on my description alone. It can go wrong, and you really should study in-person with an expert before trying it yourself.
You may ask what comes next after fire? There's no single answer, but one option is to combine fire with other things. For example, you can ignite your friends using 50 kilovolt electric shocks.
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
Sounds Like If We Hadn't Skimped on Research, We'd Never have Made Deadline
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
You recently described human religion as “Believing in three gods, who are also one god, in a way that we don't understand and we don't think the humans do either, but that hasn't stopped them from fighting bloody wars about it.” That's a recognizable though not entirely accurate description of Christianity, which is our largest religion, but is still practiced by less than a quarter of our population.
On Earth you will find religions that worship one god, or several, or countless, or countless which are all in some way aspects of one, or something so far beyond mortal comprehension that it cannot be described as “one” but only as “not many”. As the old human saying goes, fear not: you may yet be confused.
You may wonder, if subtle disagreements over Christian doctrine have produced giant bloody wars, what must these larger differences produce? Or is it the other way around, that deeply unlike religions can ignore each other more easily and therefore have smaller conflicts? A real answer would be a life's work for a historian, but as near as I can tell, it's been about a tie.
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
Not Sure this Counts as a Correction
Dear Galacticracked Magazine,
In your recent article on humanity you described us as Earth's “biggest and deadliest predator”. We are certainly not the biggest. Of terrestrial creatures, both bears and tigers routinely outweigh us by a factor of four. The overall largest predator on Earth is the strictly aquatic sperm whale which outweighs us by a factor of 160. Not only is their length 8 times our height, their width is roughly twice our height.
As for deadliest, we did hunt all these creatures nearly to extinction a few centuries ago [Editor's note: before humanity industrialized!] but we've gotten much more careful about hunting and hardly ever do things like that anymore.
Sincerely,
[Name Withheld]
