Humans are packbondy creatures. I mean, there’s just no arguing it. They packbond readily, and quickly, and unbelievably strongly. Once a human has packbonded with a thing, they will do anything to help and protect that thing.
There’s a downside to that, not often mentioned. It uses up a lot of their time and energy to build those packbonds, maintain those packbonds, and most especially to do the work of helping and protecting those with whom they have packbonded. It doesn’t leave them a lot of time and energy for helping other beings.
If you want a human to help you – if you want to reliably get their best effort – you have to packbond with them first.
“Yeah? So?” So you’re probably going to be working with humans for most, if not all, of your career. No matter how good or bad you are at your job, there will come a time when you need someone else in your workspace to help you with something, whether that’s manning the fry station for 2 minutes while you pee, sending over those numbers from marketing, or dropping everything to teach you how to do a thing that your boss told you to do or else you’d be fired.
Not to mention the big things. They don’t give promotions to just their friends – at least not so much any more. Promotions go to the people who’ve completed big, visible, important projects. It seems fair until you consider,,,, who gets the big, important, visible projects assigned to them in the first place?
Humans give boosts to the people they’ve packbonded with. They mention packbondee’s accomplishments to the boss (or the boss’ boss). They cover for the mistakes of people they’ve packbonded with.
“That’s not right! It shouldn’t be a popularity contest! It should be about who does the best –” Listen to me. Listen.
You may be right. You may be the most correct creature to have ever spoken since the beginning of galactic civilization.
It does not matter
Humans packbond. It’s what they do. I can’t stop it. You can’t stop it. No power in the ‘verse can stop it. This is how the human do.
All you can do is work with it.
If you want a human to help you – if you want to reliably get their best effort – you have to packbond with them first.
“Look, I’m introverted and scared of people and I have social anxiety so I really don’t know how to –” Hey, my pal, I feel you. I, too, am introverted. And I have social anxiety. And I have PTSD that actually – and I recognize that this is bizarre – has ‘business networking’ as a trigger.
For you, I have good news: Humans will packbond with anything.
Like, you don’t really actually have to do anything. You kinda just have to… exist. In their presence. They kinda do the rest.
If you can talk with them, that speeds things up. But it doesn’t have to be, like, good conversation. Like, it can totally go
You: boy, sure is hot out! Human: Man oh man, can you believe it? You: Wow, yeah Human: Totally You: …. Human: ….
This conversation – as awkward and uncomfortable as it felt to you, has caused this human to packbond with you a little more. If you repeat it weekly, you will get good results.
THE TAKEAWAYS
You need to packbond with the humans you come in contact with
Taking time to do that is not only justifiable, it is an important part of your job, and should be treated as such
That is to say that, as much as you hate it (and believe me, I understand), you have to take time away from actual work and dedicate it to packbonding with your fellow workers
Tips
Plan out your packbonding time. It’s easier if you can initiate than if a human springs packbonding-time on you all unexpected. In an office job I like to use Friday afternoon, but adjust according to what makes sense to you and your situation.
Keep some packbonding-time questions handy. My go-to list is:
(If it’s Monday or Tuesday) How was your weekend?
(If it’s Wednesday) How’s your week been so far?
(If it’s Thursday or Friday) Any big plans for the weekend?
How’s your day been?
You don’t have to care about the answers to these questions. All you have to do is remember that if the human is answering questions, they are not asking you any questions. Therefore questions are your friend. If you ask follow-up questions, you may be able to get through the entire packbonding time without having to do any of the talking
Learn to disengage from packbonding. You can use basically the same sentence (or variants on it), but you’ll want to practice it so that you can make it sound natural. I use “Awesome! Well, I gotta get going. Have a good one!”
I know it feels overwhelming, but a few minutes of packbonding, once a week, is all you need. Once you build it into your habits it can be no more annoying than doing dishes or showering.
This is absolutely excellent advice. You don’t have to win them all at once. A bunch of small, pleasant (or even neutral) interactions primes them for viewing you in a positive way.
This shit does not come naturally to me. I am not a superficial chat person, I am a “weird questions and brutal honesty about how fucked up things sometimes are person.” But I force myself to have these tiny conversations. And I have become pretty good at it. It is absolutely a *skill* you can level up, and it is worthwhile to do so.
we’re watching the new season of queer eye and my dad is actually crying over the ep with the trans dude, like he’s talking about his top surgery and my dad is in tears going “when you sculpt marble the sculpture is already inside, you’re just getting rid of what isn’t part of it! he’s just getting rid of what isn’t part of him!”
so from my oldass 70 year old dad to all my trans followers, y’all are marble sculptures and you’re perfect
Every time I hate my body I remember that there are millions of old rich white men who benefit from my self hatred and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s old rich white men so I snap out of that shit instantly cos I ain’t EVER giving them the satisfaction.
Oh my fucKING GOD
Wait stop this is a game changer.
i have reblogged this 4 times; i have thought about this every fucking day
Reminder!
“If every woman in the world woke up tomorrow and decided that she loved herself and loved her body just the way it is, how many industries would go out of business?”
IMPORTANT
Hey look a few more industries for us millennials to kill!
This is the most motivating thing I’ve ever seen in regards to me stopping hating on my self
People adding Nazi apologist shit onto my posts like “but nazis invented cell phones and space rockets so without them we’d be less technologically advanced VuV” like buddy, if you think for one second we wouldn’t have eventually made it to the moon or made instant communication devices without mass genocide then I dunno what to tell you except to get the fuck away from me.
Your kind aren’t welcome here.
Also would I “trade” my cell phone for a world with no Nazis?
Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me?!?!
I’d trade my own life for a world without nazis. Fuck my phone. Fuck going to the moon. Human life should not be the cost of societal and technological progress.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
??? We’d have probably had cellphones sooner given the amount of inventors, theorists and artists the nazis killed. We’d have been to the moon sooner if we didn’t have segregation. God only knows where we’d be if women were given the opportunity to invent sooner. Disabled people come up with cool stuff too. It’s a whole new world of creation if you value human life equally!
*the sound of a thousand nuclear physicists laughing*
Buckle up kids, today we’re talking about why the Nazis never invented the atom bomb. We’re gonna do this
to white supremacist minds.
Ok. So the Nazis were all about physics … as long as it was with things you could see & touch. Rockets, improved motors, even radio tech (which gives tangible audio and/or visual results) were awesome and very good careers for good German boys.
Theoretical physics, on the other hand, was viewed as made-up Jewish bullshit. The German scientific old guard did NOT like little punks like Einstein. Who did they think they were, running around with their “time is relative” and “the interstellar ether doesn’t exist” and who the shit even cares what’s INSIDE an atom, Albert, it’s not like the INSIDE does anything. JESUS.
The Nazis saw modern physics as being the same thing as Freud’s psychology, Klimt’s modern art, and Kafka’s stories: a decadent waste of time, way too Jewish, and definitely not cool or manly. So to combat uncool Jewish science, pro-Nazi German scientists founded an actual movement– “Deutsche Physik/Aryan Physics”– all about real stuff like engines and bombs and it was gonna serve the SHIT out of the fatherland. No Jews allowed.
Every single one of them, and more, emigrated to the US in the 1930s. Jewish colleagues from Axis Italy, like Emilio Segrè and Enrico Fermi– aka the guy who built the world’s first nuclear reactor, and married to a Jewish woman– joined the brain drain as Europe hemorrhaged nuclear physicists right into America’s warm, heaving, bloodthirsty bosom.
*artist’s rendition
Albert Einstein’s application to become a US citizen. Dated Jan 18th, 1936.
Nationalist German scientists cheerfully joined the persecution of their Jewish colleagues, because Nazi scientists just really wanted Jewish physicists’ jobs. But the bummer was, the Nazi scientists couldn’t handle the mathematics that made relativity work. They were too dumb to do that science. Look– we’ve all been there. But the nationalist German scientists’ approach was– instead of leveling up their game, just discredit everything their rivals did. Declare it dumb, and made-up, and all the good parts of this stuff we just said was dumb and made-up were already invented by Aryans anyway, so why keep Jewish scientists around? Just forget about this atomic physics crap and keep giving us money to talk shit about Neptune, it’ll be great.
“Hahaha wut?” -Nazis
Eventually the Third Reich figured out that atom bombs were a thing and they should probably make one. They put Heisenberg– who, if you’ll recall, just had to have his mom call in an anti-bullying PSA to the Fuhrer’s secretary three short paragraphs ago– in charge. With every single other person who knew about nuclear fission having left Germany years ago, Heisenberg was pretty much on his own. The Nazi bomb project went nowhere.
A Nazi Germany with nuclear weapons would been able to do whatever the fuck they wanted.
The only thing that stood in their way? Their own. goddamn. antisemitism.
Director of Los Alamos weapons lab and Jewish American, J. Robert Oppenheimer, seen in profile as he oversees final assembly of the Trinity test bomb. Trinity was the first test detonation in the US nuclear weapons program. (x)
Is this a post in support of atom bombs? No.
This is a post about how being so high on your own inferiority complex that you’re down to murder people smarter than you, will fuck you in assholes you didn’t even know you had.
Thank you, Science Tumblr, for that deconstruction of Nazi bullshit.
This is excellent as is, but, I need to point out that the USA political situation is in many ways falling into this same hole now. We are becoming xenophobic and anti science at our top political level. The GOP is practically anti reality at this point. We need to fix this.
Holy shit, this is the best addition to any of my posts.
The other day I got a bug up my ass about lake Natron, because I’ve seen the photos of the calcified remains of animals that took a dip in the lake on accident, but I’ve only seen those photos in black and white. I’m sure you’ve seen them.
I thought, you know, calcified remains should be really interesting to see in color, so I tried to find some that had been taken by others, in color. It was not nearly as visual stunning, they were just white rotting remains, I won’t scar anyone by posting them.
But what caught my eye wasn’t the dead. It was the fucking lake.
It’s BLOOD fucking RED.
It’s super alkaline (deadly), blood fucking red (terrifying), and oh, it gets to be 106F/41C in the water. Red spirulina algae thrives here and provides food for the main denizen of the lake…. fucking lesserflamingos.
Look at their fucking mud nests!
You need to leave!! You have found flamingo Silent Hill!! What are you still doing here!! I’ll tell you!! They’re still doing there because literally the death lake protects them from predators, nothing big enough to be a threat to them gets across the lake to get them. There are millions of them living there safely.
What the fuck. what the FUCK nature. This is some of the most amazing shit you’ve ever pulled and hardly anyone knows about it. I’m on to you. I see your blood lake with your pink goth bird decorations. I see you.
I think kids on the internet these days–and by “kids” I mean anyone under 18 honestly–need to be re-taught about internet safety and keeping your personal life away from your internet life, for safety reasons. I’ve been noticing this a lot lately, but I’ve found that the younger generations just never learned about Internet safety and keeping your personal information… well, personal.
Listen. I am a 90s kid in my late 20s. Yes, I do list my age on my description, because I feel comfortable doing so. But lately, there’s been an alarming trend where you, the younger generations, expect us to cater to all of your needs and keep you safe. And more, even.
The internet is a big, scary place. People my age and older, and some a little younger, grew up with the internet. We grew up with the dial-up noise and “get off the internet so I can use the phone!” and being limited in the way we interacted with the internet because it was expensive and strange and modems were not a thing. We also grew up with massive internet safety campaigns and worried parents scared of the unknown. Scared of the predator on the other side of the screen. It was normal for parents to be worried and assume predator until proven otherwise.
As such, everyone in my generation and older grew up with a massive internet safety awareness. Don’t give out your personal information, don’t tell them where you live, your name, your age, where you study or what. Say nothing. Share nothing. Most of us have created for ourselves internet personas, much in the way that I am Saku on the internet but someone else in real life.
Yes, the line has blurred somewhat, and over time people have lost the alarm and concern that the internet caused in them. But most of us still remember what it was like back then. Most of us remember the safety rules, remember the techniques and tactics to tell if someone was or wasn’t telling the truth, remember the golden rule about not sharing personal information on the internet.
Because the internet back then was a big, scary place. And the internet now? It still is a big, scary place. It’s just more…. normal. More a part of our everyday lives that we all just sort of take for granted.
What you kids are missing now is that we, as the older generations on the internet, the generations that grew up with the internet, still remember what it was like back then. And we still abide by our internet safety rules.
You all may think that sharing your age on the internet is not a big deal, but it is. Whatever you post on the internet can be used against you, regardless of how “safe” you feel. And one way or another, we are not responsible for you or your internet experiences. We protected ourselves back then, we policed and monitored our own internet content and use, and so should you.
The internet is not yours, it’s all of ours. And we got here first, way before you were even born, in some cases. I’ve been on the internet since I was 9, and that’s well over a decade and a half ago. If anything, fandom spaces are made up primarily of adults. Who do you think writes the good content that you consume? Who do you think produces the best art and the best fics? Who do you think writes the well-written, hot, sexy smut you shouldn’t be reading at 3 in the morning?
When we got here, we all assumed that everyone was older than us on the internet. For some reason that’s changed, and now people assume that everyone’s younger, or their age. But we’re all still here. We’ve been here for the past 15, 20 years. Even longer.
There is nothing wrong with us. We don’t owe you anything. You make your own safety on the internet, and you are the one responsible for making sure you’re safe. That’s not on us, it’s on you.
If you’re uncomfortable talking to an adult on the internet, then you’re more than welcome to unfollow, or block, or whatever. But it’s not our responsibility that you do so. If you want to know something, ask.
Most importantly, we’re not all predators. Don’t shame or fault us for existing on the Internet. We were here before you, and we enjoy things just as you do. They aren’t yours, you don’t own them any more than we do. And we have a right to be here too, without having to bend over backwards for you just for existing.
I find it so weird that people post so much personal information nowadays.
When I first joined the internet in the late 90s, i was in my mid-teens. The big thing was ‘never tell anyone your name’ so I used my nickname. 20 years later… i still don’t use my real name online, and I’m used to being called Cassie that I get confused when someone uses my real name!
Shitty people lie, you kids know that, right? Like how many times have we heard the “He said he was a senior in high school dating a sophomore, but he was actually 28 years old,” story? Why would you possibly believe if someone has their age on their profile? And if it’s just as likely to be a lie as the truth, why does it matter if it’s there at all? I honestly don’t understand this.
This is actually so important, because I’m 16, and I haven’t seen internet safety campaigns since I was in lower primary (like reception, year 1, year 2) which was a decade ago, and it makes me wonder if they teach kids about internet safety anymore. We would get shown videos in ICT about people pretending to be young, and about cyber bullying, and I never hear about them anymore, but I don’t think my younger sister does either, and there seems to be an assumption that kids just know this because they’re given internet access from such a young age, but they’re still impressionable, and so are teenagers, and we get taught about revenge porn but not internet harassment and it can lead to young people being stalked or worse because they dont have it drilled into them that they shouldn’t trust strangers
While I definitely want to and will try to do everything I can to protect the experiences of kids online, it does worry me that the public internet safety campaigns of yore aren’t common anymore… hell, I wasn’t allowed to access the internet in my own room alone until I was 18 and while I definitely didn’t follow that rule (sorry parents) it made me wary of the waters I was wading into.
Also like one of the commenters mentioned, kids, just because someone listed their age and says all the right things doesn’t mean they’re not a predator. Often predators are really fucking good at looking like unproblematic harmless people.
Curate your own experience. Watch yourself. Don’t put everything online. Don’t trust someone just because they seem to have all their information upfront. If you sense something is off, get out, log off, and don’t be afraid to talk to a trusted adult if you need help. This is BASIC internet awareness.
Frankenuff’s Castle 